


The Gray Knights

by AnyaVoss



Series: Star Wars Dark Moon Series [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: #we'rejustforcebuddies, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gray Jedi, Hoth, Jakku, Jealous Kylo Ren, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Love/Hate, Reylo - Freeform, Sexual Tension, Slave Rey-no guys she literally gets caught by slavers, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Smut but alotta plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-02-21 21:57:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13152837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnyaVoss/pseuds/AnyaVoss
Summary: With Snoke dead, and Rey recovering from her injuries on Hoth, Kylo Ren has taken control of the First Order and is quickly gaining control of the galaxy.  Even as the Resistance is crumbling, Rey believes that Kylo may once again have ulterior motivations for his seemingly evil deeds, but with their force bond broken and Master Luke suspicious of her own allegiance, she walks a dangerous line between dark and light...This is the sequel to the Dark Moon Rises, and though it takes inspiration from the Last Jedi, it is not exactly canon.





	1. Hoth

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas! I really appreciate all the kind comments and encouragement from the conclusion of the Dark Moon Rises, and so, I wanted to show my appreciation... here's the first chapter of part 2:

“Hoth sucks!”

Even with the cloth tied around his nose and mouth, Rey could hear the disgust in Finn’s voice.  He drove the forked tool hard into the manure, leaving it standing upright so that he could lean his elbow against the handle while he removed his gloves.

“I think we’re running out of places to hide,” Rey shrugged. 

“Right… well… there’s only the whole rest of the galaxy after all,” Finn agreed with caustic optimism.

“It’s… it’s not so bad,” she argued, but even as she said the words she could not suppress an evil grin.  She knew that she was inviting Finn to begin a tirade over the many obstacles the hostile ice planet presented them, and secretly, she agreed with him.  Hoth did suck.

“Not so bad?  NOT SO BAD?” Finn yanked the cloth shielding his mouth and nose down, “Did you hear what happened last night?  A wampa got into the north tunnel and almost ate Jessica, and I guess, according to the general, that sort of thing is pretty standard for rebel bases on Hoth.  She was unconcerned, said that that sort of thing used to happen all the time— ALL THE TIME, Rey.  That means that nightmare ice monsters who want to eat your flesh could stroll through here at any moment, but, you know, no big deal or anything.”

Rey giggled and flung another shovelful of tauntaun droppings into the bin.

“Oh, that’s funny?” Finn demanded, but he was grinning while he said it.  “Ice monsters!  And here I thought I only had to worry about freezing to death!”

“And shoveling tauntaun dung,” Rey reminded him.

“Right.  Tauntauns… the most foul-smelling species in the universe.  Of course maybe that’s why we’re the ones that got assigned to manure duty— obviously the Resistance needed its bravest heroes for this horrifying mission!”

Rey giggled again, deciding not to remind him that he was the one assigned to clean the pen that night. She was only helping out to keep him company.  Well, that and the fact that she never seemed to be assigned any duties at all.  Master Luke was off-planet attempting to gather allies most of the time, and had ordered her to focus on meditation and rest.  General Organa was avoiding her—this too she knew was at Master Luke’s request, and the few remaining Resistance fighters at the base fell silent whenever she approached and watched her with starry-eyed fixation—most of them having been raised on Jedi myths and legends from childhood.  She understood, but it still made her uncomfortable.

In fact, just thinking about it was enough to put her in a more somber frame of mind.  They all expected something from her.  They thought she would become another Master Luke and do something useful like blow up a death star or save the galaxy.  So far, all she had managed to do was help Kylo Ren take charge of the First Order.  Well… that and not die.  She was pretty sure that neither of those should earn her the title of ‘hero’.

Finn must have sensed her change in mood, for his expression had become serious as he watched her shovel.

“Luke still doesn’t think you’re ready to come with him yet, does he?” he guessed, pulling his gloves back on and bending to work.

“He thinks I still need time to recover,” Rey agreed quickly.

“What do you think?” Finn prodded.

Rey sighed and threw her shovel down.  Her annoyance with Master Luke was finally getting the better of her.

“I think what he’s really afraid of, is me.  He thinks I’m a liability,” she confessed.  “Like the minute I go off-planet, I’ll go dark side and run back to Kylo Ren.  I feel like he doesn’t trust me anymore.”

“Have you told him that?” Finn asked gently.

“Sure, but he always turns it around and suggests that those are my fears, not his, and then tells me I need to rest and meditate more.  I’ve had enough rest and meditation for 10 jedi!”

“And what does General Organa think?”

“How would I know?  I think Master Luke has her convinced that even saying ‘hello’ would send me spiraling into a dark side rampage that would end the Resistance.  She hasn’t said more than three words to me since I woke up,” Rey complained.

“That’s ridiculous!”

“I know!”

“You’d never go dark side!”

“I know!”

“You’d never go back to Kylo Ren!”

“Probably not.”

Finn stopped working long enough to glance over his shoulder at her.  Rey grabbed her shovel and did her best to look as though she was thoroughly concentrating on removing tauntaun dung.

“I mean, it’s not like you were with him because you wanted to be,” Finn reminded her.

“Right!”

“You were a hostage.”

“Right!”

“It’s not like you guys were friends or anything.”

“Right.”

“He’s a murdering psychopath.”

“Sure.”

“You don’t have anything in common with him.”

“Right.”

“It’s not like you guys have some kind of weird bond or something.”

“Right… I mean… not like a bond or anything.  There was… kind of… you know… some ‘Force-stuff’ but that—“

“Force-stuff?” Finn repeated, his voice a little higher than normal.

“Well, yeah, but not like--- I don’t know, sometimes, I could see his dreams—“

“Huh,” Finn said.  She could not see his expression due to his mask, but the deep furrows across his brow suggested concern.

“Just sometimes!” she clarified.  “Once in a while, he could use the Force to show me things in dreams.  It wasn’t like, all the time or anything.”

“Right.  So you were… you were like, ‘Force-buddies’ then?”

“What? No!  He’s not my ‘Force-buddy’!  What are you talking about?” Rey scoffed.

“I don’t know.  I guess I’m talking about you and Kylo Ren being Force-buddies.  It’s no big deal.  I mean, it’s not like you guys had a full-on master and apprentice relationship or anything.  It was just more of a casual, every once in a while type of thing.  I get it.  These things happen,” Finn soothed.

“Stop talking,” Rey snorted.

“Luke should cut you some slack.  I’m sure he’s had some Force-buddies he’s not proud of over the years,” Finn remarked lightly.

“Shut-up,” Rey smirked.

 

 

With the tauntaun pens clean, Rey had little else to occupy her mind.  She considered turning in early, but the thought of lying on her bunk in the freezing cold dormitory, staring at the ceiling for hours as sleep evaded her was not an appealing one.

She was never assigned to patrol, but with Finn having mentioned that random wampa attacks were apparently a major concern, she decided that it was a good enough excuse for her to do a few rounds through the tunnels.  Plus, patrolling brought with it the added bonus of solitude.  When the Resistance fighters weren’t patrolling, they spent most of their time huddled in small groups near the warming vents in the common area, and at the moment, she really didn’t feel like being stared at.

The Resistance base on Hoth was not well-constructed.  Many years ago, the rebels had widened the natural ice caverns and tunnels to create echo base—a well-defended and impressively stocked encampment which was, none-the-less, destroyed by the empire after a major battle.  Scavengers had come to Hoth shortly thereafter, mainly to scrap the imperial AT-AT’s, but in order to survive, had also constructed a temporary underground shelter to the north of the old rebel base.  The Resistance was currently utilizing the old scavenger shelter as their latest hideout.  The generators occasionally froze—due to the extremely low temperatures at night, leaving the base without heat or light.  The tauntaun dung came in handy at those times.  Once it dried, it could be burned, and the resulting fire were usually long-lasting and quite warm.

They had spent several days widening the main cavern in order to accommodate their very small fleet.  They were down to one transporter, the Falcon, and a few x-wings—the rest having been destroyed by the First Order after the base on Crait had been discovered.

The main ice cavern served as both a hangar and a common area for the fighters who were off-duty.  It was by far the warmest area on base.  The south tunnel connected the large cavern with a series of three small, natural ice caves, and one which they had carved out themselves.  The largest of these housed the command center, where the General spent most of her time.  The remaining southern caves housed the dormitories and the tauntaun pens.

The north tunnel led to a storeroom and the defense trench—though adding the word ‘defense’ before trench was really just wishful thinking.  In the event that they were discovered, the plan was to flee.  They did not have the people or the weapons to defend themselves.

Rey slid into her heavier outer parka and grabbed a pair of googles and a mask before heading for the north tunnel.  She passed Poe coming back on a tauntaun mount, and nodded in his direction.  His response was to turn the mount around to trot beside her.

“Heading outside?” he asked.

“Thought I’d get some fresh air,” she smirked, holding up her mask.

“Well, it’s a lovely day for it.  Conditions are sunny and tropical with a warm southwest breeze,” he informed her.  She knew what this meant—it was colder than usual with a wind chill that would instantly freeze any exposed skin.  “You might want to confine your nervous pacing to the tunnels 00for the time being.”

So he had noticed that she spent a great deal of time walking the length of the south tunnel between the dormitories and the hangar, back and forth, over and over—great.  If Poe had noticed, then Master Luke certainly had.  Maybe that was why he kept insisting on rest and meditation.  She was making everyone nervous with her restlessness.

“You want some company?” Poe asked.

“No,” she sighed. 

She felt his energy change.  He was disappointed.

“I think I might go hideout alone in the storeroom—do a little meditating,” she explained.  “Master Luke thinks I need to meditate more.”

“Ah, sure.  Jedi stuff,” he agreed quickly.  “Yeah, no problem.”

“I’ll see you at dinner,” she offered.

“Right.  I hear it’s Correllian filet night—I wonder what wines they’ll be pairing with it this evening.”

“So… c-rations again?” she grinned.

“If they haven’t run out.  I have a bet going with Brick that one of these nights they’ll surprise us with roast tauntaun.”

“Chewie would eat it,” Rey chuckled.

“Chewie WOULD eat it,” Poe agreed.  “See you around, Rey.”

“Yeah,” she said, though he had already turned round and headed for the main cavern.

The relationship between her and Poe was currently a strange one.  They had always been friendly, perhaps even a bit flirtatious—at least on his part, but lately… lately their interactions had become a little… intense.  Like the others, he tended to watch her with a sort of fascinated devotion, but unlike the others, he was not afraid to approach her.  This had led to a lot of awkward silences and uncomfortable small talk, and once, a strange sort of moment during a pause in the conversation where he had leaned forward just as she had, and they had almost kissed.

They hadn’t, of course, but she had a feeling that the more time they spent together, the more moments like that would occur—and she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that yet.

But it certainly wasn’t because of Kylo Ren! 

Rey reached the storeroom and barricaded herself inside, leaving her heavier parka on, because the storeroom cave was closer to the outer entry and was therefore much colder than the main cavern.  With Master Luke off-planet, it was safe to think about Kylo Ren, yet even without her master there to note the change in her aura, she still felt guilty about it.

Master Luke had told her time and again that in continuously thinking about Kylo Ren—trying to understand why he had made the choices he had, or what exactly had happened the day they killed Snoke, or what he was planning now—would create an unhealthy obsession which would draw the darkness to her.  But telling her that it was wrong to even think about him, was like telling someone not to imagine Admiral Ackbar wearing a metal bikini—completely impossible.

On the day which they had killed Snoke, she had felt so completely assured that Kylo Ren had a secret light inside him.  He had worked so hard, continuously putting his life on the line for so many years to bring an end to the creature which Emperor Palpatine had become.  Yes, he had killed his father and many others in his quest, but he wasn’t irredeemable.  He had saved her life after all—or maybe he hadn’t. 

There was only one thing she remembered very clearly from the time that Snoke died to the time that she had woken up on board the Falcon—and to this memory she had returned over and over again.  It was the memory of lying on the red ground of Korriban, weak and dying.  Kylo Ren was bent over her, his eyes wide and terrified, his lips parting slightly and she had been so sure, that at that moment, he would say the words she had been waiting for.

But he hadn’t.  He had whispered good-bye.

Since that day, she had had very little news of him.  Master Luke only spoke of him grudgingly, and then only when he was berating Rey for asking questions about him.  General Organa never spoke to her at all, and her friends avoided discussing him because they were afraid of reminding her of the time she had spent as his prisoner.

She knew that he had taken over leading the First Order, and so all she knew of him was based solely on what the First Order was said to be doing.  The First Order was currently hunting down the Resistance without mercy, paring down their numbers after every encounter.  The First Order had also taken control of most of the major trade routes and had implemented their own system of taxation on goods.  They had also expanded their operations, building bases and fortifications on most of the core planets.  It would stand to reason that all this had been done on Kylo Ren’s orders, and one might even conclude that these orders were in line with increasing control over an ever-expanding portion of the galaxy.

Yet she had been wrong about Kylo Ren’s true motivations once before-- or maybe she hadn’t.  Maybe, it was as Master Luke insisted, and he had simply manipulated her into believing that his only goal was to destroy the greatest evil in the universe so that he could use her power to destroy Snoke and take his place.

Maybe.  Or maybe not.  One thing was true, even though she had often denied it to Master Luke-- she longed to speak with him.  She longed to stand before him and demand answers as to what he thought he was doing.  She might have also longed to see him smile his lopsided smirk, or feel the comforting,  steady throb of his life Force that came whenever he was near—but these thoughts (and other far less appropriate ones) she was learning to shut down.

That he no longer spoke to her in dreams bothered her a great deal, and when she did meditate (which was far less often than she would admit to Master Luke) it was often with the hope that she would obtain some sense of him and what he was doing.

Rey had just settled herself cross-legged on the floor of the storeroom when she recognized a familiar feeling— Master Luke was near, and approaching rapidly.  A few seconds later the ground began to shake, and by the time she was on her feet and had reached the door, a distant, high-pitched whine was echoing down the north corridor.

The Falcon!  Master Luke and the Chewie had returned.  She ran the distance between the storeroom and the main cavern reaching it just in time to see the lower bay doors open, raining down snow and ice, as the Falcon slowly descended.

Finn reached her side before the ship touched down.

“Heard they just got back from Nal Hutta,” he confided, his voice low.  “I know the Resistance is short on friends but—“

Pain burned through Rey’s body like a shot of Correllian whiskey.  Her vision blurred and then exploded with light and through tears she could see the blindingly bright sand dunes of Jakku.  People were screaming—their cries rang in her ears as they died, and then, his black hooded robe striking a startling contrast to the midday sky, Kylo Ren was there, and even standing with his back to her, she knew it was him.  That he was the cause of these cries.

“REY!” Finn yelled.

Rey blinked and found herself staring directly into Finn’s wide, brown eyes.  She was on her knees in the ice cavern.  The Falcon had only just landed.  Jakku was gone.

“What is it?” he demanded.  “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Jakku.  Something’s happened on Jakku.” She glanced frantically around.  Master Luke was near, he would know what to do, but of all the faces that surrounded her, none belonged to him.

Finn followed the movement of her eyes and knew at once what she was looking for.

“Stay here.  I just saw him head for the command center.  I’ll get him,” he ordered.

Rey nodded, though as soon as Finn took off, she got to her feet and followed.  She reached the command center not long after him and heard him interrupt Master Luke’s report to General Organa.

“—I don’t know what happened, but it was something, definitely something!” Finn explained.  “She said it was Jakku.  Something’s wrong on Jakku!”

General Organa was the first to notice her.  She cleared her throat and gave Master Luke a pointed look.

“What did you feel?” Master Luke asked, approaching her quickly.

“I’m not sure.  Death, I think.  A lot of death, and it was Jakku, I know that much.  There were people screaming.  They were afraid and in pain.”

“What else?” he demanded.

“Kylo Ren,” she admitted, refusing to make eye contact with either the General or her master as she spoke.  “He was there.  He was… hurting people there.”

Without glancing up, Rey could sense that General Organa and her brother were communicating with one another in the silence that followed her words.

“I’ll go,” Master Luke said at last.

“I’m going too,” Rey added, daring to glance up.  The general had turned away to face the monitors, but her shoulders slumped as if she had suffered a defeat.

“It could be a trap,” Master Luke growled.  “I didn’t sense anything—“

“It’s my home!” Rey argued, her voice sounding shrill, even to her own ears.  “Please, it’s my home.  Everything we do is dangerous.”

“You need to—“

“Rest and meditate?  No.  I don’t.  I’m ready.  I want to go,” she insisted.

Master Luke sighed, and shook his head.

“Why?” she demanded.  “Why not? I’ve healed, I’ve meditated, I’m back to what I was before—“

“You’re different then you were,” he disagreed.

“HOW?! How am I different?”

“Mouthier,” he decided.

“Master Luke, you have always accused me of being mouthy!”

“I said mouthi-ER,” he insisted.

Rey threw her hands up in frustration and opened her mouth to protest, but Finn was quicker.  Ever the brave hero, he stepped in between master and apprentice.

“I’ve just had a thought,” he announced.  “Chewie’s been flying alone since Nal Hutta, and before that, all the way from Onderon. He’s got to be tired.  If you’re flying out tonight… well, Rey IS an experienced pilot, and she’s had a lot of fly time on the Falcon and—“

Luke glared angrily at his sister.  Even though her back was to him she shrugged.

“It’s a small base,” she explained.  “Things get around.”

She turned so that Rey could see her face in profile and spoke to Luke.

“You always say people are what they choose to be.  If you think you can prevent that by taking away their choices, you’re wrong.  You should know that by now.”

“I won’t argue with all of you.  I don’t have the energy for it anymore,” Master Luke growled.  “You can come, but you will stay by my side and if I send you back to the ship, you will go to the ship.”

“Agreed!” Rey said quickly.

“I could also be of great assistance,” Finn added.

“I’m leaving… now,” Master Luke grumbled, stalking from the command center.

“That wasn’t exactly a ‘no’, was it?” Finn asked her.

Rey grinned and made to follow her master.

“Rey!” General Organa called after her.

Rey stopped and turned to face her, at the entrance to the outer hall.  The General’s eyes were sad and her face grim.  She stared silently at Rey for a moment, and Rey could feel all the things she wanted to say—and all the things she had been wanting to ask since Rey had returned, but when she spoke it was not to say or ask those things.

“Be careful.  We need you.”

“I will,” Rey promised.

In the tunnel, Finn grinned proudly and made a slight bow.

“Thanks,” Rey chuckled.  “I mean it, really.  Thank-you.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” he lied.  “I just wanted to get off-planet long enough for my toes to thaw.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Present

Rey dropped into the pilot’s chair and let out a frustrated sigh.  Chewie didn’t bother to look up as he  gave a low moan of inquiry.

“No,” she answered.   “The t-joint was rusted through, so I replaced it, but we’re still not getting juice, and I’m almost out of ideas.”

Chewie growled.

“No, I haven’t tried THAT yet,” she admitted.

Chewie growled again.

“Because it could kill the back-up hyperdrive and then where would we be?” she argued.  “Fine! FINE! I’ll maroon us if that’s what you want.”

If Rey had thought her grudging agreement would spare her any further argument from the wookie, she soon realized her mistake.  Chewie grumbled about ‘some people’ thinking they know everything, when clearly they don’t, before launching into a mostly muttered rant about how he was kriffing tired of being ordered around by just about everyone in the Resistance and then continued on to one of his favorite complaints—how younglings these days are the worst he’s ever seen and have no respect left for their elders.

Rey only half-listened at first, but as he went on, her mild irritation began to grow into concern.  Chewie was famously laconic.  As Master Luke was wont to say, “Chewie will tell you more in two words than Han will in two hundred.”  Something was bothering her friend, and more than likely it wasn’t how disrespectful younglings were nowadays.  She wondered if it had anything to do with his most recent mission.

 Rey waited for him to finish, and then counted off a full two minutes of silence so that when she did speak, she would sound off-hand.

“I heard you went to Nal Hutta,” she said and yawned.  “Unkar Plutt—that blobfish that ran Niima outpost—he went there once.  He said the entire planet smelled like bantha farts.”

Chewie guffawed at this and enthusiastically agreed.

“I don’t know any Hutts personally or anything, but I was always told never to get mixed up with them.  The other scavengers used to tell stories about Niima the Hutt.  From the way they told it, she was so horrible, she would have made Plutt seem like a joy to be around,” Rey confided.

Chewie snorted at this and gave a few low whines and growls.

“In carbonite?” Rey repeated, not even having to feign surprise, “No, I hadn’t heard that one before!  After all that, you’d think the General wouldn’t want to have anything to do with—“

Chewie growled.

They lapsed into silence again, Rey smarting from his reprimand.  He wouldn’t tolerate her questioning the General’s orders.

Attempting to make amends, Rey stood and removed the panel behind the co-pilot’s chair.  In silence, she crouched down and began to rewire the calcinator. Chewie gave a long, low moan.

“Yeah, right,” she muttered.  “ _I..._ should’ve killed him when I had the chance?  What about _you_?  You had a clear shot on Starkiller base, and instead of going for it, you winged him.  So don’t go telling me that—“

Chewie growled.

“Ha! Emotional duress-- what a load of bantha fodder,” she grumbled, slamming the panel back in place.  “There.  Let it power back up and we can try it again.”

The wookie began the power-up sequence and when the engines hummed smoothly in response, Rey smirked and shook her head.  Chewbacca didn’t bother rubbing it in with words, but even if she lived to be a hundred, she doubted that she’d ever see a wookie with as smug a look on his face as he had at that moment.

 

 

 

Exiting hyperspace above Jakku, Rey stretched and leaned forward in her chair.  She wasn’t sure what she expected to see—maybe a blackened crater on the face of the planet, or maybe tiny mushroom clouds blossoming up from the surface.  Jakku glowed brightly, from a distance appearing quite peaceful.

“Are you picking up on any other ships in the area?” Rey asked.

Chewie growled in response.

“That doesn’t mean they’re not there,” Master Luke replied, his voice coming from directly behind her.

Rey jumped.  She hadn’t heard his footsteps.

“We’ll start at Niima Outpost and then do a fly-over at Cratertown,” Master Luke ordered.

Rey switched over to manual piloting and brought the ship down near Carbon Ridge.  She followed the Ridge until she found Pilgrim’s road, marked by the sitter’s pillar.  Though they were moving too fast for her to see, she knew the sitter was still there—ancient, silent, and unchanged.  Nothing on Jakku had changed, and Kylo Ren was not there.  She would know, she would feel him—but there was something.  Some sort of energy left behind.  He had been there, and not very long ago.

She glanced over her shoulder at Master Luke for confirmation of what she was feeling.  He frowned, but gave a very slight nod.

Rey set the ship down near to where it had rested for so long.  Unkar Plutt’s stand had been rebuilt from salvaged scrap in the time since the First Order had attacked, as had most of the dwellings.  The shape of the settlement had changed.  Scavengers were mostly solitary and distrustful by nature.  They liked their space, and why not?  They had a whole desert to themselves.  Community facilities had always been grouped together close to Plutt’s stand, but the domiciles were spread out.  Now it seemed, tents, and make-shift shelters were crowded together, much nearer to the public facilities, and stranger still the communal facilities appeared deserted—even Plutt’s stand.   There should be at least a few salvagers grouped around the washing basin given the time of day.

She noted this with growing concern before leaving the cockpit.  Finn had lowered the entry ramp and was already outside.  He grinned at her and squinting, turned his face toward the sun.

“Never thought I’d miss Jakku,” he said as she approached.

“You and me both,” she agreed as the two fell behind Master Luke.

“I can finally feel my toes again, and look—no wampas!”

“I think I’d take a wampa or two over Plutt any day,” she snorted.

“That’s only because you’ve never met a wampa,” he assured her.

The inside of the stand was as empty as she’d feared—not a body to be seen, except for behind the counter.  Rey stopped short and did a double take. 

Unkar Plutt was not there.  In his place stood Fa-Lun-Daski, an elderly Cerean with a long scar across his tall and tapering forehead.  If he was surprised to see her, he did not show it.

“Where’s Plutt?” she asked, approaching the counter.

“Gone,” he answered mildly.

“Where?”

“Who can say?”  Fa-Lun-Daski scratched his nose in a bored way and glanced speculatively toward Master Luke.

Rey felt her Master’s annoyance.  She was supposed to fall back and let him approach first unless otherwise instructed, but this was her home.  There was no way that Master Luke could know that Unkar Plutt and Fa-Lun-Daski had long been rivals, and to see the latter behind Plutt’s counter likely meant that Plutt had gone somewhere he would not be returning from.

Master Luke strode calmly past her.

“Perhaps you could say,” Master Luke began, “If you were properly motivated.”

In answer, the Cerean brought the security gate crashing down over the window and disappeared from behind it.

“That was… strange,” Finn volunteered.

“He thought you were threatening him!” Rey accused.

“I was going to offer him credit reimbursement for information!” Master Luke growled.

“Not taking sides, but I can see how ‘properly motivated’ can sound like a threat,” Finn soothed.  “Doesn’t it seem like this place is kind of empty—I mean, compared to last time?”

“Yeah,” Rey agreed quickly, glancing around.

“Not as empty as it looks.  There is nervous energy here and fear,” Master Luke ascertained.  “They’re watching us.”

“Kylo Ren was here, wasn’t he?” Rey demanded.

Master Luke eyed her warily.

“Perhaps.  Though I don’t have any sense of this massacre you were describing.”

“What about Plutt?  Something definitely happened to him,” Rey pointed out.

“Hmm,” Master Luke said, which she knew very well was not an agreement.  It was a noise he made when he thought she was incorrect about something.  “I’ll see if I can get the Cerean to speak with me.  You know this place.  Perhaps you would have an easier time of it on your own.”

He was right, of course.  On her own, one of the other scavengers might recognize her and give an accounting without any motivation.  She nodded her understanding and slipped away from them.

Outside, she could feel eyes on her, though she did not see anyone.  She walked slowly past the wash stand and through the main grouping of huts.  Her feet knew where she was going before her head did.  She began to walk faster and faster and then to run.

A ways outside the settlement, partially buried in sands, lay the toppled AT-AT walker she had called home for so long.  When she had first scavenged it for parts, she had found a flower growing near the hull, and it had occurred to her that if something so small and fragile could cling to life in that spot—so too could she.

Rey ducked her head as she went inside.

Her manuals and schematics were gone, as was her hammock.  Even the little doll she had fashioned from an old flight suit had vanished.  Yet traces of her life there still remained.  The helmet of the rebel Captain Raeh lay on the ground partially filled with sand, and beyond that was the wall, scored with hundreds and hundreds of the pathetic little scratches which numbered all the days of her childhood.

She studied it curiously for a moment and then reached out to run her fingers lightly over the etchings

Her fingers burned and her vision clouded.

She saw his hand where her own had been—his black gloved fingers gently tracing over the marks on the wall—the hem of his cloak trailing across the sand—his silhouette framed by the entryway to the AT-AT.

Rey fell to her knees breathing heavily.  He had been there.  He had been in that place, standing where she now crouched.  Not looking for her there, surely, but why then?  Some sadistic form of tourism?  Could it be that he felt the same emptiness at the severing of their bond—the same sense of loss that she could barely admit to herself?

A faint shifting of sand—the tell-tale sound of a stealthy footstep—and she was on her feet, lightsaber in hand, but the profile in the doorway did not belong to him.

A high-pitched shriek came from the creature, who stumbled backwards, fell, flipped over and scurried up the wall to the ceiling.

Rey backed away and raised her blade slowly, so as not to frighten it further.  The glow of her blade revealed a familiar shape clinging to the ceiling.  Four black eyes blinked at her- though not all at the same time—and she could see the light of her saber reflected in them.

“Turk-Mau?” she asked, though she knew it was him.

The creature watched her for a few seconds and then, unexpectedly enough to make her jump, he shot down the wall, skittered through the doorway, and disappeared.

She knew him.  There were some species in the galaxy that should never be combined, and Turk-Mau was proof of this.  Though no one was certain of the exact coupling which had brought such an unfortunate creature into being, it was generally agreed upon that he had the blood of both the reptilian Ssi-ruu, and some unknown humanoid species.  Turk-Mau could walk on two feet, but only slowly and with a lumbering, unsteady gait.  He preferred to run on four legs when he was frightened, or thought that no one was watching.

The others did not call him ‘Turk-Mau’, the name given to him by the anchorite who discovered him newly hatched and abandoned near the Graveyard of Giants.  The others called him ‘Hiss’ because it was not believed that he could speak.

But he could-- somewhat.

Whatever birthed him, had immediately dropped him onto Jakku like a piece of trash into a garbage can.  For years, it was assumed that he was non-sentient, and little more than an animal. Turk-Mau spent most of his days perched atop the Niima gate, basking in the heat, but also intently watching everything the other scavengers did with all four eyes.  At night, he would circle nervously around the fires, perhaps drawn to the heat.  If he came too close, the others would drive him off by throwing scrap or shouting at him.  He learned to never to come too close.

He had learned his first word from her.

By then he had begun to mimic what he saw, but only when he thought he was alone.  At first, it was walking on two feet by using his tail to balance.  Then it was picking up random pieces of scrap and pretending to wash them with sand.  At some point, he had found some old, sun-bleached rags and wore them draped around his neck and across his back.  His adeptness at mimicry was a little unnerving.  It suggested that he was slightly more sentient than they had first assumed.

For some unknown reason, he developed the habit of perching atop the knee joint of her AT-AT in the late afternoons and watching her work.  If she called out to him, or made any sign that she noticed him in any way, he was quick to vanish.  It was perhaps a year or more until he was comfortable enough with her to come down to the ground while she was there, and longer still until he would sit within a few feet.  Once, she had come across a rather large piece of canvas in an old fighter she was scavenging, and it occurred to her that Turk-Mau could use it to shelter under at night.  He was likely cold-blooded, after all, and the nights seemed to make him restless.

Upon presenting it to him, he has immediately hissed and run away.  He had returned the next day, and she had tried again, and though he would not take it from her, he had at least not run.  She had tried to explain it to him many times that day:  “You take this from me.  It is for you.  It is a present.  See?  I give.  You take. Present.”

She had given up and left the folded square of canvas on the ground.  The next day, it was gone.

And then came the night when the squatters had dropped her mostly lifeless body on the dunes just beyond Niima Outpost.  Turk-Mau was the first to discover her there.  She remembered looking up into two of his black eyes and trying to find the strength to ask for help, but he disappeared.  The next time she awoke, it was daylight and when she opened her eyes, she found that she was staring directly at a water pouch.  Beyond that, curled up on the ground, lay Turk-Mau.  When he saw that she was awake, he lifted his head and hissed one word: “Pres-s-s-s-en”

‘Present’-- and still one of the best she had ever received, for who knows if she would have lived without it.

“Turk-Mau?” she repeated, following him outside.  The creature had stopped at the top of a low sand dune and was watching her intently.  She took a few more steps towards him, and he rose to stand on his back legs—eyeing her warily. 

“You remember me, don’t you?” she asked.  Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you.”  She moved as slowly as possible while she spoke, coming nearer to him.   “I’m looking for someone, Turk-Mau.  I’m looking for a tall man,” she held her hand over her head to mark Kylo’s height.  “He wears black clothing.  Black like the night sky.  He came here—” She pointed towards the AT-AT.  “Have you seen him, Turk-Mau?  Have you seen the tall man?”

The creature shifted uneasily, his eyes moving between her and the horizon beyond.  Rey took one more step, but the creature dropped back to all fours and shot past her, running up the leg of AT-AT.  He stopped at the knee joint and glanced back at her before dashing across the vehicle bay and leaping off the boarding hatch, disappearing over the rise.

Rey sighed dejectedly, and was about to turn away when Turk-Mau reappeared at the top of the dune.  He stared directly at her and then disappeared again.  Suddenly, she understood him.  He wanted her to follow.

She jogged after him, cresting the dune to see that he was climbing a second, higher rise beyond the first.  She was not as fast on two legs as he was on four, but once he reached the top he waited.

As she finally approached, he rose to stand on two legs and turned his face away from her—to the west.  Panting, Rey reached his side.

“Wha—what is it?” she asked, following his eyes to where the sand met the sky.  A smudge of black marred the perfect line between the two.

“Oh…” she whispered.  “It’s smoke, and that’s…. that’s… it’s coming from the Graveyard of Ships, isn’t it?  What’s happened there?  Is it him, Turk-Mau?  Did the tall man in the black cloak do something there?” she asked.

Turk-Mau blinked three of his eyes as he watched her.  His lipless mouth curved awkwardly upward in what she realized was his best attempt at a smile.

“Pres-s-s-s-en,” he hissed.

 

*             *             *

 

With Niima Outpost seemingly abandoned, it took Rey only a few minutes to locate a speeder, and liberate it from its clamps.  She did not look for Master Luke or Finn—and though she realized, while shooting down Pilgrim’s Road, that it was probably wrong of her to go alone, she could not risk Master Luke ordering her to stay with the ship, or even Finn tagging along.  Kylo Ren was already gone, but whatever disaster he had left behind, it had something to do with her.  Maybe it was a message for her.

Distracted, she realized only after passing the pillar that she had not glanced up to look for the sitter.  She had always looked for the sitter, every single trip to the Graveyard of Ships, even when she was little.

The smoke was heavier just past Kelvin Ravine, and then finally, she was able to discern exactly where it was coming from.

The massive, old, star-destroyer known as the Inflictor was burning, and looked as though it had been burning for some time.  The conning towers appeared to have been blow apart, and were now nothing more than charred remains scattered about the sands for miles.  But burnt scrap was not the only thing strewn across the desert.

She passed the first body not long after that, and almost did not recognize it for what it was—small wonder as it was missing a head and both of its arms.  There were more bodies.  Some which had been burnt almost to ashes, others missing limbs, or twisted and contorted in horrible ways.  She had to stop the speeder when the stench and smoke became too much for her, and still everywhere she looked—bodies.

They were men mostly, and many appeared to have been executed in horrible fashion.  Very few had been cleanly beheaded.  There were bodies with their legs cut off at the knees, and one could see where they had dragged themselves through the sand until their strength gave out.  There were blackened bodies with their limbs twisted in agony as though they died fully conscious and thrashing as they burned.

They were squatters, she realized, all of them.

And then she saw _him_.  The man from her nightmare.  He lay on his side, curled in the fetal position, his arms wrapped protectively around himself. Cautiously she prodded him with her foot, and his arm fell away.  His innards spilled from his split-open abdomen, stinking and filled with maggots.  He had died trying to hold in his own intestines.

Rey fell to her knees and vomited.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know all my fellow Reylos read 'rewire the calcinator' and immediately went: I haven't had my muffin yet, REY! lol.... and then they read all the way to the bottom and went, 'welllll, that got dark quick."  
> Soooooo... wth is going on with Kylo Ren? Did you catch that part in the Dark Moon Rises where she was telling him what really happened with the squatters and he told her to stop? You probably realized it even then, but it wasn't that he didn't care.
> 
> Working on Chapter 3 and hoping to have that out in a few nights-- if you're wondering wth kylo's problem is now, just wait... it gets worse...


	3. Heroes

The sand between her fingers shifted, fusing into glass which vibrated strangely as it became one continuous, smooth, black plane.  The light was gone, as were the bodies and the smell.  The low hum of powerful engines and the faint taste of stale recycled air replaced the punishing heat and stench of burning flesh.

Disconcerted for only an instant, Rey realized that she was crouched upon the floor of a large starship, and she knew too that she was not alone.

She could feel his eyes on her.  If she turned, she knew he would be there, and though she had set off to find him, she did not want to see him at that moment.  More that she did not want him to see her—weak and horrified and retching on the ground.

The silence stretched out for too long.  She would have to turn around and confront him.

Rey swiped her hand across her mouth and swallowed thickly.  Strange that she could not feel the beat of his life force.  Stranger still that he would stand for so long with nothing to say.

She turned her head slowly and found herself staring directly into his eyes.

Kylo Ren stood before a long window, his hands clasped behind him.  His demeanor composed, his expression stoic—it was only his eyes which betrayed him.

“What have you done?” Rey rasped, her throat still raw.  “Why?  Did you think I’d be pleased?  Did you think I’d want this?”

He did not react, only continued to watch her with eyes that seemed both to see right through her and examine every detail of her appearance.

“You left me.  You’ve abandoned me in every way and now--“

He turned away abruptly, shifting his attention to the massive hangar the window overlooked.  Rey felt as though she had been slapped.  She would rather he taunted, or threatened, or even stood there smirking at her—but to ignore her?  To pretend as though she didn’t exist?  After everything that had happened between them, this was more than she could stand.

“Supreme Leader!”

The sharp staccato tap of General Hux’s boots followed quick upon his words.  Kylo did not turn as he approached.

“The scouting unit has returned from Hoth.  They have found no sign of the Resistance base.”

“Well… keep looking, General.  They are there, I can assure you of that.”

“No…” Rey whispered. “No you can’t, please!”

“How can you be so certain that—“

“You DARE to question me, General Hux?” Kylo seethed.

Hux’s left eye twitched as he pressed his lips together into a thin, firm line.  It took him a moment to answer.

“No…Supreme Leader,” he said, though even Rey could hear the barely concealed hatred in his voice.

“Good,” Kylo commended him. “Now leave me!”

 The General stomped away without so much as a glance in Rey’s direction.  She was invisible to him, and perhaps that was why Kylo had chosen to ignore her.

“Please,” she repeated.  “Please don’t do this.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  Snoke is dead.  You destroyed the greatest evil in the galaxy.  I don’t believe you did it only to replace him.  You can come home now… together we could—”

Kylo turned so that she could see his face in profile.  His eyes were on the retreating figure of General Hux.

“And General?” he called after the man.  “This time I want them wiped out.  Every last one of those Resistance scum!”

“I understand, Supreme Leader!”

“NOOO!” she screamed.  Kylo Ren turned again to stare out the window.

 

“REY!”

She blinked, and found herself staring up into Finn’s concerned eyes.  He had her by the shoulders and was in the process of shaking her as he yelled her name in her face.  The remains of the Inflictor smoldered around them as the sun beat down upon the Jakku desert.

“Master Luke!” she gasped. “I have to tell Master Luke!”

“What happened here?” Finn demanded.

“It doesn’t matter now!  They know where we are!  The First Order knows and they’ve already sent scouts—“

“They’re coming here… to Jakku?”

“No!  To Hoth!  They know the Resistance is on Hoth.  They’re in danger!  We have to warn them!” she insisted, trying to stand up.

“We are prepared in any event,” Master Luke said.

He was standing calmly by her side.

“We are NOT prepared!  Not for the First Order, we’re not.  They can’t defend themselves.  The only thing we can do is run, and they won’t even be able to run if they don’t get a head start.  Please Master Luke—“

“We are prepared in any event, you don’t need to worry.  You’ve had another Force vision, haven’t you?”

Rey stopped struggling to stand and relaxed against Finn’s grip.  A Force vision—was that what it was?  Is that why he did not speak to her—because she was watching something that had already happened or would possibly happen?  It was different than her experience on Hoth or what had happened back at the AT-AT.  Those visions were confusing, little more than a series of images that flashed before her eyes—this has been clear, every detail of the encounter.  It had seemed so vivid and real.

“I… I think maybe… maybe I have…” she agreed.

“Get her back to the ship,” Master Luke ordered.

 

*             *             *

“So Fa-Lun-Daski runs the stand now?” Rey confirmed.

“Yeah.  From what we were able to piece together, the Knights of Ren show up a few days ago, accuse Plutt of breaking some kind of unknown intergalactic law, drag him out to the middle of Niima Outpost and behead him,” Finn explained.

“And everyone just… just watched?”

“They killed off his thugs before they even got to him.  Honestly, no one seemed to mind very much.  I guess one of the knights dragged out Plutt’s entire horde of portions and dumped them in the street.  That Cerean guy… Fa-loo-whatever?  He has to pay them for scrap with actual credits now!”

“Why—“

“Would the Knights of Ren do that?” Finn finished her question.  “My guess?  Unkar Plutt must have really pissed somebody off.”

“And that’s why everyone in Niima Outpost hid from us?  They were afraid that we’d come to hand out more executions?”

Finn frowned and shook his head.

“Nope.  This is where it gets a little strange.  No one wanted to talk to us.  In fact, a few of them tried to fight us. They know we’re with the Resistance—“

“We’re the good guys!” she protested.

“Not to them.  They were protecting the Knights of Ren.  No one gave us any information willingly.  Luke had to—“

“But the Knights of Ren and the First Order are… the First Order practically destroyed Niima Outpost!” she argued.

“I know.  I was there!” Finn reminded her.

Master Luke sat on the bench behind the holochess board.  He leaned back with his eyes closed.  He looked to be meditating—or sleeping—Rey could never be sure of which.  A deep, aggrieved sigh suggested that he was awake and listening to them.

“The First Order and the Knights of Ren are two separate organizations,” he muttered.

“Yes, two separate organizations, both controlled by Kylo Ren—same end game!” she scoffed. 

“Not necessarily.  You remember Ka’vec.  What were the Knights doing on Ka’vec?” he asked calmly.

“Hmmm… let me see if I can remember. Oh, right!  They were abducting me!” she snapped.

“Before that!” he growled.

“They were…” she thought back to that day and shuddered.  The burning rain, the citizens of Ka’vec running to their ships, and the raiders lying in wait, cutting them down like butchers.  It would have been a massacre except for--- except for the fact that the Knights of Ren showed up.  “They… fought off the Raiders,” she realized.

“Ah,” Master Luke said, “and like the people of Niima Outpost, how helpful were those brothel workers when it came to providing us information on the Dark Moon or the Knights of Ren?”

Rey drew in a sharp breath.  The woman they had searched for had held her at knife-point—taunting her about the time of the Jedi being over.  She could almost feel the soft rugs of that room beneath her feet, see the woman’s black-lined eyes glaring at her—even smell the… the incense.

The incense which had made her sleepy, made her powers of suggestion weak.  She remembered Brick, sitting at the desk in the medbay on Baudere.  “Baudere is the only known source of Resurrection Dust in the galaxy… if dried and pressed it can be burned as incense… it makes people hallucinate,” he explained. Rey glanced toward Master Luke who nodded as if he knew her thoughts.

“They knew the Knights of Ren,” she realized.

“Yes,” Master Luke agreed.  “And they were loyal to them—would have fought us if it had come to it.  I would venture to say, that the Knights may have come to their aid before.”

Rey frowned and rubbed her head.  What was Kylo Ren doing with the Knights?  It seemed to her that he did nothing on a whim.  Every step he took, no matter how unconnected it appeared, usually served some far-reaching scheme.  What was his agenda this time?

“So…” Finn interrupted her musings, “What you’re saying is… the Knights of Ren are like… like… heroes to these people?”

“It would seem that way,” Master Luke agreed.

“And that means,” Finn continued, “that to these people, we-- the Resistance—are the bad guys?”

The answer to his question did not need to be spoken.  It hung in the silence around them.

Rey clenched her fist.  It was so like him!  So, he would try to use his tricks and mind games not only on her, but with the entire galaxy as well!

“Where does that leave the First Order though?” Finn countered.  “There’s no way anyone can put them in the ‘good guys’ column.  No one is going to suddenly forget that they wiped out the entire Hosnian system!”

“No, certainly not,” Master Luke agreed.  “In fact, if anything, the First Order becomes more unpopular by the day.  Their most recent attacks—in Hutt Space—have sent allies flooding towards the Resistance.  Even the old Empire knew to look the other way where the Hutts did their trading.  I find it strange that Kylo Ren should act with so little foresight.”

Rey thought of Kylo, the way she had seen him in her vision—turned away from her, facing the window, his hands clasped lightly behind his back, and she knew that he never acted without foresight.  What was he plotting now?

“All that matters right now, is that the Resistance is safe,” she reminded him.  “Master Luke, you have to contact the General.  She has to know that the First Order are coming to Hoth.”

“She knows,” he shot back.  “The Resistance is safe on Hoth.  Trust your master.”

Finn glanced towards Master Luke and then quickly away.  It happened so fast that it could have been missed, but Rey did not miss it.  Finn knew something.  Questioning him in front of Master Luke would not allow her to discover what that something was, however, so though she noted it, she did not comment.

“Then we need to get back to Hoth,” she decided.  “The General needs us there.”

“No,” Master Luke decided. “There’s still more here which we need to understand.  The Knights did not come here simply for Plutt.”

“What do you mean?” Rey asked, wincing at the defensive tone in her voice.

Master Luke and Finn traded a long, confused look-- one that she was meant to see.

“I meant that if you walk down the entry ramp, you’ll find yourself in the middle of a massacre.  I mean that they searched and destroyed an imperial starship, which is even now, still burning.  I mean that there are other reasons that the Knights came to Jakku—“

“You’ve already figured all of that out!” Rey interrupted her Master.  “These were squatters.  They made their home in the Inflictor, and they beat and murdered, and did other…. _horrible_ things to the residents of this planet.  If the Knights of Ren wanted to look like heroes then what better way to—“

“No,” Master Luke countered.  “This was different.  You saw it in your visions.  Plutt was executed cleanly.  Without mercy, certainly, but without any emotion.  Did you not see what happened out there?  This was a massacre.  This was an act committed in a berserker rage.  This… was personal.”

“You think… you think there was something on that ship?  I mean, it was an imperial starship—one of the last, right?  You think Kylo Ren wanted to get his hands on something in that ship, and when the squatters tried to stop him…” Finn’s voice trailed off suggestively.

“Maybe,” Master Luke frowned, but he was looking at Rey as he spoke.

Rey glared at the metal grating beneath her feet, determined not to give anything away by mistake.  She knew that she should tell them both about what happened to her, and that she suspected Kylo Ren’s motive in destroying the squatter settlement likely had something to do with her, but there was no simple way to do that.  Besides, Master Luke would likely say that Kylo had done it simply to manipulate her emotions, and Finn… well, Finn would look sad and concerned, and be more worried about her than he already was.  What was done was done.

“These squatters were violent people—violent and evil—but not stupid.  If there was anything of value on that ship, they’d of salvaged and pawned it years ago,” she shrugged.  “I think you were right the first time.  The Knights of Ren want the people to think of them as heroes.  They got rid of Plutt and they got rid of the squatters, and now everyone in Niima Outpost is protecting them—goal accomplished.”

“No.  They came to Jakku to find… _something_.  I can sense it,” Master Luke said and sighed.

“Well, that really narrows it down, doesn’t it?  So what’s the plan, we search the entire planet and try to find what’s missing?” Rey scoffed.

“Reeeeey,” Finn’s tone was warning.

“If you want to find out what the Knights of Ren are really up to, I think there’s a better way,” she said, leaning forward.

Master Luke raised an eyebrow, a sign that he was curious.

“Right,” Rey said, drawing a deep breath.  She didn’t have a plan yet, just a few thoughts she was still making connections between, and a desperate need to get away from that smoking, body-strewn desert.  She made eye contact with Master Luke first and then slowly turned to look at Finn.  She hoped they would think that she was taking the time to impress upon them how important what she was about to say way.  In reality, she was still trying to form something concrete out of the mass of thoughts tumbling around in her brain.  “Back on Ka’vec… the woman that we were trying to find… what was her name?” Rey stalled.

“Amalia,” Luke grunted, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Right, right…so this woman… we thought she had found out something about the Dark Moon through her uhhh…. ‘work’ with a high-ranking First Order officer.  It made sense at the time, very few people, even within the First Order knew about the Dark Moon, but while I was there, I noticed something strange—an incense burning in one of the upper rooms.  I think… no, I’m pretty sure that it was an incense that came from Baudere.  There’s only two ways she could have gotten it.  The first… black market trade.  Brick used to smuggle it out on the resupply ship, and he probably wasn’t the only one, but it’s rare… very rare stuff.  I guess that’d make it pretty expensive, and that did not look like the sort of establishment that has that kind of wealth.  So the only other way they could have gotten it—“

“Is if they have a connection with someone on Baudere!” Finn finished, his eyes flashing excitedly.

“Right, and not just anyone.  The only people on Baudere who are allowed to leave—to come and go as they please—are the Knights of Ren,” she reminded them.

Master Luke nodded thoughtfully.

“So…” she concluded, relieved that a plan had formed as she spoke.  “If this woman gets expensive gifts AND was privy to highly classified information, that must mean that she is uhh… VERY close to one of the Knights of Ren.  If we find her—“

“We might be able to find out what the Knights of Ren are planning,” Finn finished.

“Exactly,” Rey agreed, very pleased with herself.

“And you think,” Master Luke growled, “that if we go back to Ka’vec, that same woman, will be in the same place, just what—waiting for someone else from the Resistance to come and find her?”

“Maybe not, but it’s a starting point, right?  Someone will know something! It’s better than twiddling our thumbs here, isn’t it?” Rey demanded.  “Or… we could go back to Hoth and—“

Chewie gave a long cry.  Rey turned to see her friend leaning against the wall of the corridor which led to the cockpit.  He had been listening silently to most of their conversation.

“What?” Finn asked.  “What’d he say?”

“He says he votes for Ka’vec,” Rey translated.

“Well if Chewie says so then by all means!” Master Luke snapped.  He leaned back again and closed his eyes.

Rey felt a momentary surge of victory.  Glancing around at her companions, that feeling was immediately overcome with foreboding.  Master Luke, though his eyes were closed, and his head leaned back, held himself stiffly, and she realized that this was the second time in so many hours that he had given in with very little to say.  Finn nodded his head, as though assuring himself of something.  He did not make eye contact with her, and she recalled the quick glance that had passed between him and Master Luke.

Even Chewie had been uncharacteristically quick to voice an opinion after she brought up Hoth.

She should have demanded to know what was going on, what they were hiding, and she almost did.  She opened her mouth angrily, but then… closed it.  Just beyond their ship, the desert burned with the remains of the Inflictor, the corpses of its inhabitants strewn for miles.  Master Luke had recognized Kylo Ren’s rage.  He had noticed her reaction to it, and still he had backed off just shy of suggesting that she knew what had caused it.

If they were hiding something from her, then she had to believe that there was a good reason for it.  Just as she had a good reason… or perhaps just a decent reason… well… a reason anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think with the next chapter, I might do a Kylo Ren POV. I thought it would be kind of interesting to juxtapose Rey and her inner circle with Kylo and his, but I'm not sure if I want to do that in back to back chapters or if I should place an event in between the two. Hopefully I'll make up my mind and have something ready in a few nights ;)


	4. The Night District

She knew this ship.  She’d travelled on it when she was sick with misery and hopelessness.  She was not afraid now, only anxious.  He was on that ship.  She could feel his presence, radiating warmth like the heating core on Hoth.  She was trying to move towards him, but whenever she felt certain that she was close, she would round a bend and find herself staring at another dead end.

She could also sense that time was passing and that with each second, she came closer to waking up a million light years from where he was, and her anxiety soon turned to panic.  Every time she opened a door, expecting to find him there, she found another corridor, and each corridor looked the same as the last, and no matter which direction she chose, there were only dead ends.  A blank wall where there should be none.

She wasn’t even sure how long she’d been running through those hallways when a realization struck her—the ship was empty.  There were no crewmen, or Stormtroopers, just the echo of her footsteps. The ship was a trap! 

The walls were closing in on her and she knew what would come next—the air vent.

Not this time! Not again!

She drew her light saber and screaming, began to slash the walls as they contracted around her. Sparks flew and metal groaned as it bent. Wildly, she swung the blade again and again, kicking the walls even in fierce determination that she would not be trapped.

In one last desperate move, she raised her blade over her head and stabbed it into the wall, tearing it down with all her strength—

And the wall gave way, tearing easily as though made of paper, before falling away.

Kylo Ren stood before her.  His broad shoulders sloped as though he were exhausted and his head bent forward so that she could not see his face.  He paid her no mind, his attention being focused on something he clasped loosely in his hand.

Panting heavily, she took a step closer.

He closed his fist tightly and glanced up, but not at her, at something she could not see.

“Kylo…” she called, still breathing heavily after fighting her way through the walls.  “Please, look at me, please!”

If she’d been given time to think—if she were not terrified of waking up, or if her heart were not thudding distractingly in her ears—she might have demanded that he spare the Resistance base on Hoth, or begged to know why he seemed intent on their destruction. 

Desperation, however, has a way of distilling one’s foremost concern, separating it from logic and ego.

“Why did you leave me there?” she asked, her voice breaking as she called out.  “On Korriban… I thought... you made me believe that you needed me—even if it was only to be your apprentice, but I… I believed you.  I believed you when you said your only goal was to destroy Snoke, but then… you left me there.  I was dying and you… you left me there—“

Kylo Ren closed his eyes and held his clenched fist to his forehead as though his head pained him.

 “I don’t understand!” she screamed.  “Why can’t you see me?”

He sighed and turned away from her.  He was leaving!  Walking away from her again!

“No, don’t!” she shouted “STOP!”

She made to run after him, but at her first step, her foot sunk into the floor as though it had suddenly liquefied, and as she struggled, still trying to get to him, she sunk deeper and deeper as he walked further away.  He would not stop.  Chewie growled in her ear.

 

 

Rey gasped and sat up in her chair, shocked fully awake at the controls of the Falcon.

In the chair beside her, Chewie growled low again.

“S-sorry,” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes and blinking hard a few times.  “I was only going to close my eyes for a minute.”

The wookie nodded, and for a moment, Rey thought that perhaps he didn’t notice the sweat on her forehead or the way she was trying to stealthily quiet her breathing by inhaling slowly through her nose, but then he glanced over his shoulder, as though checking to make sure they were alone, and leaned slightly towards her.

His voice was little more than a low rumble in his chest.

“No,” she answered quickly.  “Not a vision.  Just a dream.  A bad dream… at least, I think it was.  To be honest, I don’t know the difference anymore.”

Chewie nodded slowly and returned his attention to the controls, but not before she noted the concerned narrowing of his eyes.  It made her think of the look which had passed between Finn and Master Luke.

“Chewie… if you knew something… about Hoth… or about Kylo Ren… something I don’t know, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” she asked.

He gave a short, annoyed moan at this.

“No, the correct answer would be: Of course, Rey!  Friends don’t keep secrets from each other!” she corrected him. 

He growled and waved one hand, and then his voice rose an octave in a series of short purrs.

“I’m not keeping secrets!” she snapped.  “I didn’t tell you because you never asked.  Nobody has asked, not even Luke.  You all just assume!”

Chewie’s mouth closed firmly at this, but he gave her a side-eyed glance.  When he spoke again, his cry was softer.  Rey sighed and slumped in her chair.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” she admitted.  “Sometimes I think that nobody asks because they already know I can’t answer that.”  She thought for a moment before attempting to answer.  “He’s… not unaffected by what he’s done.  I know that doesn’t mean much, but… if he feels something close to guilt for all the evil that he has done, that has to mean… I don’t know, Chewie.  Sometimes, I would start to believe that I could see the good in him.  He protected me more than once when we fought together.  At times, he could even be… gentle.  I would start to believe that I could see the light building in him.  On Korriban, I really believed he would come back to us, but now… the more time passes, the more I start to think Master Luke is right.  Kylo tricked me into believing that I could save him, so that he could use me.”

Wisely, Chewie gave no reply to this, and left Rey to her thoughts.  When he at last left to catch a few hours of rest in the bunks, it was with a stern warning not to close her eyes ‘for a few minutes’ again.  Rey smiled weakly and nodded her agreement, and for the next few hours, she piloted them toward Ka’vec with the image of Kylo Ren’s retreating form as her constant companion.

 

*             *             *

Rey stood and stretched, her back cracking in relief as she yawned.  They had set down once again at the outskirts of the city.  Beyond the cockpit, the mud plains stretched as far as the eye could see.  The sun was setting behind them, and dusk had given some color to the wide expanse of gray.

She called out for Master Luke as she strode from the cockpit, but it was Finn’s voice she heard as she approached the ramp—though she couldn’t make out his words.  He spoke in low tones, barely above a whisper.

Intentionally, she made her footsteps ring out louder, and the conversation stopped.  When she reached them, Finn flashed her a wide grin, though she was quick to notice, he avoided eye contact.

“Almost dark,” she greeted them.  “There’s a few cloaks back in the hold—should help us blend in with this crowd.”

“You two go on ahead,” Master Luke ordered.  “I’ll see if I can reach Leia and check in.  I won’t be long.  TRY and stay out of trouble for once?”

“Of course,” Rey agreed, giving him her most insincere smile.

 

Rey waited for Finn at the bottom of the ramp, pulling her cloak tight against the chill in the night air.  It had rained recently, for the ground squelched beneath her boots as she paced and her nose stung when she breathed through it.  She would have to remember to wash her boots when she returned.  She knew from experience how quickly the rain on Ka’vec could eat through fabric.

Finn raced down the ramp, fastening his cloak as he ran.  He stopped when he reached her and held the fabric open so that she could see that he wore his blaster at his side.

“Good,” she approved, and then led the way to the city gates.

The outlaw town of Ka’vec only came alive when the sun went down.  There were other ships parked closer to the gates, and still more were setting down.  Even outside the wall, they could hear the voices and the music which carried from the Night District.

Finn walked casually with his hood thrown back and his expression full of curiosity.  He had far fewer opportunities to leave the base than she did, and he appeared to be enjoying himself.  Yet beneath that, she could sense his tension, like a tightly wound metal coil.  If she prodded him even a little, the truth would doubtless burst free.

She was considering questioning him.  She was certain that without Master Luke watching over his shoulder, Finn would break relatively easy.  Perhaps that was what was causing some of Finn’s nervous energy—the fear that she would ask.

Chewie had said that he did not feel like he had to know everything—that he had enough trust in his friends to believe that what they kept to themselves, they kept for good reason.  She did not have so stoic a view on the matter.  Guilt was the only thing keeping her quiet.

Together they passed through the gates and fell in with a large group of similarly cloaked figures, all moving toward the Night District.  The music was louder now.  Strains of songs leaked from open doorways mingling together in a discordant tune. 

They reached the first lane strung with red and purple lights and with a practiced eye, Rey sized up their surroundings.  There were many humans, but she also counted Zygerrians, Trandoshans, Rodians, and even a small group of Hutts accompanied by two scantily-clad Twi’lek girls, among them.  They moved leisurely, laughed loudly and called to one another as groups moved from club to club—many of them moved drunkenly.  In the darkest spots, far from the glowing lights, there were spice dealers, and she could smell the products of their trade in the air—the pungent smoke of Marcan Herb and the chemical burn of glittersteim.  These odors blended with the smoke from food carts and the combination made her slightly nauseous.  She glanced at Finn to catch his reaction and almost laughed.

His eyes were huge and his mouth hung slightly open.

“We… we have time to… I mean… there’s no rule against eating when you’re on a mission right?” he asked, taking a few mesmerized steps towards a food stall selling long skewers of grilled meat.  I mean, we’ve been on rations for… for…”

“Yes, but you’d better wait for Master Luke.  He gets grumpy if you get food without him… well, grumpi-er” she amended.

“Right,” Finn agreed, reluctantly tearing his eyes away from the roasting spit.  “So what are we looking for?”

“The brothel is off the main square just ahead,” she said nodding in its direction.  “There’s a scarlet banner over the door.  Last time, it was morning, and I went in through a window above the alleyway, but at this hour… well, I assume those rooms would be in use.  They don’t allow female patrons.”

“So what you mean to say is, I’m on my own,” Finn realized.

“Just until you find out if she’s there or not.  There’s a tavern just beside it where I’ll wait for you.  If she’s there, come out and we’ll wait for Master Luke.  If she isn’t we’ll get food and figure out where to go next.”

“Right,” Finn nodded.  “Right so I…”

“You go in there and ask if they still have a girl named Amalia.  I don’t know, say you’ve ‘had her before’ and you really appreciate her skills or some sort of nonsense like that,” Rey hissed.

“Right.  Right…” Finn continued to nod.

“Go!” she snapped.

Before he could say ‘right’ again, she gave him a push that started him walking and then veered off to cross the square to the tavern.  She waited until she saw Finn stumble inside, and then ducked beneath the awning of the bar to claim a seat at a street table with a good view.

Immediately, a large Zygerrian with gray, furry ears and long, bony projections framing his chin, showed his fangs and growled at her.

“What do you think you’re doing sitting here?” he demanded.  “Who are you?”

Rey turned to throw a quick glance at the other faces seated around the table.  Besides the grey-furred Zygerrian, there was another with red fur, two other men who looked to be human—one of these wore a patch over his eye and his face was heavily scarred, and a sharp-toothed Twi’lek man with his hood pulled low over his eyes.  They were an unsavory-looking group as she had ever seen.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said quickly, waving one hand slowly at them.

“It doesn’t matter,” the red-furred one repeated.

“I’m no one,” she said.

“She’s no one,” growled the man with the eye patch.

Rey turned her attention back to the door of the brothel.

“Anyhow,” Grey Fur continued the conversation she had interrupted, “Daryus said they took three ships and spaced the cargo—called it ‘unlicensed goods’.

“That’s nothing!” Eye patch countered.  “They caught up to Urk’ma in Hutt Space while he was carrying a 200 head cargo and fined him more than the damn ship was worth—in HUTT SPACE!”

“They gone too far when they did that!” the other man agreed.

“Too right they did,” Eye patch confirmed.

Rey scowled, realizing she’d chosen a table of slavers to blend in with.

“And I heard tell they brought down a Hutt ship over Tattoine!” Eye patch continued.  “Don’t know whose idea that was, but whoever’s pulling the strings of the First Order ain’t got quite the smarts old Snoke had.  Even the Republic left the Hutts alone for the most part.”

“The Hutts are backing the Resistance efforts now because of that incident,” Grey Fur said in a low growling voice.

“I heard that, as well,” the robed Twi’lek spoke at last.  “I can’t say I think it wise.’

“That’s because you’re not thinking long term.  Last time those rebels brought the Empire down, didn’t they?  And who benefitted?  The Hutts, if you remember.  They backed both sides, of course, but when them Rebels took over, they left the Hutts more or less alone—“

“While they decimated the Zygerrian Slave Trade,” Red Fur hissed, interrupting eye patch.

“Which is why you get on the winning side early this time,” Eye Patch shrugged.  “They got Darth Vader’s girl running things and she’s hard smart about fightin’ dirty.  Urk’ma sent her two of his own ships and fifteen men besides.”

“Daryus did the same, right after they spaced his cargo,” Grey fur agreed.  “They wouldn’t take slaves though.”

“They will if the First Order starts hounding them again.  I heard—”  Here Eye Patch leaned in and dropped his voice to a low whisper.  “The whole band of ‘em is holed up on Nal Hutta, ‘cept for Vader’s girl and a few of her people, and they’re stockpiling weapons and fighting men at a right high pace.  They’ve got no shortage of allies with the First Order pushing new trade regulations and tariffs.  And I even hear tell… they got themselves another Jedi.”

“If we could be guaranteed the same deal as the Hutts—“ Grey Fur began.

“Too right you could.  They’re still at a spot where they NEED things, supplies and such.  The Zygerrians get in now, I’ll bet the motherlode they’ll leave Outer Rim to police itself when everything’s said and done.”

Grey Fur laughed gruffly.

“Well… it bears thinking on anyhow.”

“Perhaps,” the Twi’lek nodded thoughtfully.

Inside, Rey felt a boiling rage.  These were bad men, dealing in the slave trade and planning to exploit the Resistance to fill their pocketbooks.  General Organa would never ally herself with ones such as these!  And their silly notions about the Resistance growing rapidly, she wanted to laugh about that more than anything.  The First Order was destroying them week after week.

She tried to ignore them as they continued speaking, watching the door intently as though she could will Finn to appear in it, but then the conversation caught her attention again.

“—600 credits for something like two bits of Resurrection Dust,” Eye Patch was saying.

Rey turned her head so fast she almost cracked her neck.

“Ah, but he won’t say where he got it,” the Twi’lek scoffed.

“They never do, but I know this one. He’s got connections.  REAL connections.  He’s got himself a nephew training with Knights of Ren—I swear it.  They’re looking for slaves.”

“I don’t believe it!” Grey Fur rolled his eyes.

“True.  It’s true.  He says if I can get 300 heads—and it has to be a good mix of species and sex at that—he’ll pay in dust.”

“We’ve got 50 head on board even as we speak.  Mandolarians, mostly, but a few mixes and unknowns as well,” Red Fur was quick to offer.

“I might be interested,” Eye Patch grinned.

It was at that moment that Finn chose to stagger back through the doorway of the brothel.  He stopped in the middle of the square and looked around as if confused.

Rey stood and hurried over to him.

“Well?” she asked.

“Good… GOOD NEWS!” he said a little too loudly.  He wrapped his arm roughly around her shoulder.

“Finn are you… drunk?” Rey demanded.

“No!” he said quickly, and then frowned and seemed to think about it for a minute.  She raised one eyebrow.

“Yes,” he corrected, nodding very seriously.

“How is that even possible?” she hissed. “You’ve barely left my sight!”

“Oh, met a nice fellow in there, a really nice fellow.  He bought me a drink… no… TWO drinks… maybe it was three.  They were very small drinks.  He says… lemme think about this, it was important—“

“The girl?” she reminded him.

“Right.  He says the girl with the dark hair and eyes has got her own rooms now.  She only sees a few clients these days and only in her own rooms, and that’s near the terrace by the… East Gate? No!  WEST Gate.  ‘West is best’—I kept saying that so I’d remember.  Can we get some of those meat sticks?”

“Not right now!” she snapped, grabbing his hand and dragging him through the square.  “We came in through the West Gate, if we head back that way, we should run into Master Luke.”

 

Master Luke, however, appeared to be taking his time.  They reached the west gate and the terraced housing block just inside the wall without seeing him.

“Sit here,” Rey ordered, pointing to a low retaining wall.  She eyed the row of tall, tapering, housing units with unconcealed annoyance.  They were marked with deep-seat windows in the shape of crescent moons and circles, and lights burned behind most of them.  It might take all night to find the girl, as the area outside was devoid of friendly people to ask directions from.

Rey drew a deep breath and closed her eyes, attempting to enter a meditative state. 

“Lead me,” she whispered.

She felt nothing.

“To where?” Finn asked.

“Stop talking,” Rey ordered, opening her eyes to study the buildings again.

“That is what… what I’ve been trying to do all day,” he complained.  “You don’t know how hard it is!  Luke says if I talk, then it could mean the end of the Resistance!”

Rey stiffened, clenching one fist, but then forced herself to continue to appear distracted by her mission.

“Master Luke wouldn’t say that,” she soothed, “You’re mistaken.”

“Am not! He said if you knew--- what I can’t say—if you knew all that stuff, then the plan doesn’t work!”

“Oh that!” she scoffed.  “He told me all about that on the ship.  You don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

“Noooo,” he chuckled.  “Now you’re being sneaky, and that’s not like you!  Ever since Kylo Ren tried to turn you dark… ever since then, I’ve been real careful.  We all have.  Didn’t matter.  First Order kept coming, blowing up our bases and then we’d have to start again.  DIdn’t matter how careful we were.  Nobody blames you, you know.  You can’t help it.  He’s in your head.”

“What do you mean?  He’s not in my head.  He used to be, but that’s… that’s gone now.  Since I came back, that’s gone.”

“No it’s not.  He’s been using it to find us, every time we move bases.  Don’t feel bad.  We know you’re not doing it on purpose.  That’s why we took you to Hoth.  It’s not the real base, but the First Order thinks it is and when they get there… BOOM!” Finn laughed.

Rey was shaking.  She couldn’t help it.

“Boom,” she repeated in a choked voice.

“Oh no, I think that’s… that’s what I wasn’t supposed to say… wasn’t it?” Finn mused.

A door slammed across the street as a man pulled up his hood and left a housing building.  A moment later a familiar scent assailed her nose.  It was sickeningly sweet and made her feel a second or two of dizziness.

“Wait here,” she ordered, slipping away from Finn who likely hadn’t even heard her.

Even in the midst of such a horrific discovery, she still had a mission to complete.  What did it matter that they had all lied to her?  That she had been used as bait?   If it furthered the cause of the Resistance-- but then accepting slave soldiers from Zygerrian traders and other help from Hutt crime lords would further it as well, wouldn’t it?  Shouldn’t there be a line drawn somewhere?  And how could Kylo Ren use her to track the Resistance when she had tried every way possible to reach him through the Force and could not?

The door was unlocked.  Feeling for the hilt of her light saber, she opened it and slipped through.

She found herself staring at a wide, unevenly-spaced, spiraling staircase that rose up to where the ceiling tapered to a point.  There were doors off the stairway at odd intervals, and none seemed to be the same shape or size.  The smell of incense was stronger here.

She began to climb.  It wasn’t long before she was able to ascertain where the smell was coming from.  She stopped before a tall narrow door with an oddly shaped iron handle, and unsheathed the hilt of her light saber.

Rey crouched, readying herself, and knocked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wait til you read what happens next!! :o


	5. Escape

No one came to answer the door.

Of course no one came to answer the door!  She was an idiot.  The woman hand proven herself to be cautious and more than capable of defending herself upon their last encounter.  Rey had done nothing more than give her forewarning and time to prepare herself.

She ground her teeth together in frustration.  Master Luke would have made her hang back.  Master Luke would have taken his time, and insisted they watched the house to see who came and went and at what times.  She, however, had raced into action, intent on proving to herself that she was useful, that she was more to the Resistance than a liability.  Thanks to her lack of foresight, she now had only one option.

Rey backed up and ran at the door, smashing her shoulder against the solid wooden planks.  She felt a little give.  It took two more runs before the door burst inward, depositing her into a richly adorned chamber which reeked of cloying incense.

Red gauzy fabric hung in swathes from the ceiling. Rey brushed a shimmering curtain aside impatiently and saw the woman reclining on a divan. A large and intricately designed hookah sat beside her, and as Rey watched, the woman lifted the hose to her mouth and inhaled.  Staring back at Rey with an obvious lack of concern, she exhaled leisurely.

“Well… come in, why don’t you?” she smirked, giving a pointed look toward the broken door.

“Your name is Amalia, isn’t it?” Rey asked, taking a cautious step forward.

The woman did not bother to answer her question, but she gestured at Rey with the hand that held that hookah pipe.

“I know you!” the woman realized.  “The little would-be Jedi.  I suppose you still haven’t found what you’re looking for?”

“On the contrary.  The Dark Moon was a ship.  A sith ship used for battle meditation, but I suppose you already knew that.”

“Then you’d be supposing incorrectly,” the woman said and drew another breath from the tube.  “I did as I was asked-- dropped a few crumbs, hoped the insects would follow the trail, and when they did, I collected my fee.”

“You…you… were working for the Knights of Ren?” Rey realized.

“I suppose so,” the woman agreed slowly, as though the thought had not occurred to her before. “Though I have no loyalties to them.  It was more of a favor to a very important client—I was asked to share the name of the weapon which destroyed Affa Bal Zid, and if anyone came looking for more answers, to call upon the Knights—which I did.  A good thing too.  We weren’t expecting the raiders.”

“A favor?” Rey repeated shakily.

“Mmm,” the woman agreed.  “So, you see, if you’ve come to threaten me for specifics, you won’t have much luck.”

“You know the Knights of Ren well--” Rey began.

The woman gave a harsh laugh and took another breath from the hookah.

“Stars, no!  Not all of them, at any rate.  Only one Knight in particular, and only for an hour or two at a time.”

Rey flushed at the woman’s words, and cleared her throat.  The haze of smoke was beginning to affect her.  She felt light headed, and her mouth burned when she swallowed.

“I need you to tell me everything you know about him then—his coming and goings, any small bit of information he might have shared.  Anything strange you might have noticed. I need to know what the Knights of Ren are planning.  I can compensate you.”

“And if I don’t?” the woman smirked.

“Then… I can find other ways to motivate you.” Rey said, her face becoming hard.

Ah… not very subtle.  The ways of the Jedi are changing with the times, I see.  Very well, you make a compelling case.  Let me think…”

She took another deep hit and blew the smoke in a long steady stream toward Rey.

“I know that Kylo Ren likes to be on top.  I know that pain makes him more excited—that he likes me to scream when he pulls my hair or bites me.  He likes it rough and fast against the wall or on the floor, and I know that it makes him hard when I pretend to be frightened.  I know his tongue has talent, and I don’t mean with words.  I know he’ll pay extra to put me in restraints and—“

“STOP!” Rey shouted, her hands curling into fists. “You know that’s not what I meant.  You’re just trying to… trying to…”

The woman chuckled under her breath and cast a furtive glance towards Rey.  The smile faded from her face as she lifted herself slightly on one elbow.

“Does my work disgust you, little Jedi?” she asked, her tone deadly serious.

“You’re toying with me! Pretending you don’t understand what I mean!” Rey spat.

“Or is it—“ the woman continued, speaking over Rey, “that you feel betrayed?  Oh yes, don’t think I don’t recognize that look in your eyes.  In my line of work, one sees it often enough—and don’t think I don’t understand the feeling, little Jedi—I do!  I certainly do.”  She calmly took another hit, but then scowled, and lifted the lid on top of the hookah bowl, judging what was left.   “Let me see if I understand correctly… I suppose you were taken prisoner during the raid.  You were terrified of him at first—I’ll bet he enjoyed that immensely—but all the same, you held out, refusing to give him whatever secret plan or information it was that he wanted.  You’re a loyal little Jedi after all!  And it surprised you when he treated you well, didn’t it?  You were suspicious for a while… but then… alone and afraid and starved for connection, you began to snatch up those little tokens of kindness he occasionally threw your way.  It was all you had to think about, so you began to attribute great meaning to every little smile or lingering glance, and he let you—no, I’m willing to bet that he encouraged you.  And when at last, he wanted you in his bed, you were more than willing—but then again… this is Kylo Ren we’re discussing.  More likely he had you on your knees on the floor of a—“

“You… will… answer… me, NOW!” Rey growled, snatching her lightsaber and igniting it.

The woman did not react the way Rey had expected.  She stared at the lightsaber for a moment, and then scoffed, as though she simply found it annoying.  Slowly and deliberately, she removed the hookah lid and set it aside.  Next, she removed a draw string pouch from among her voluminous robes—Rey’s grip on her hilt tightened as she tensed into a fighting stance—but when she opened it, the pouch appeared to contain only ash.

She took a pinch and threw it into the open bowl.  Rey understood.  The woman did not burn Resurrection Dust as incense, she smoked it, using it as a drug.  She was likely far too high to understand the threat she was facing.

Rey lowered her blade.

“Now then, little Jedi… if you don’t like my answer, perhaps you should try asking a more specific question.  You said that I should tell you anything I knew.  It isn’t fair to be angry because I did as you asked,” the woman pouted, running her fingers through the gray and shimmering dust in her pouch.

“Alright, fine,” Rey agreed.  “You said that you were able to contact the Knights of Ren, that you had called them to this place when the Raiders came.  How?”

“The same way you’d contact anyone else—the HoloNet, of course!” the woman giggled, as though Rey was being ridiculous.  She scooped the dust into her hand and let it fall between her fingers.

“There is no HoloNet service in the Outer Rim,” Rey countered.

“Oh no?’ the woman challenged, sitting upright and swinging her feet to the floor.  “I suppose I’m just going to have to prove it to you—“

The woman moved faster than Rey would have ever suspected she was capable of moving.  Her hand came out of the dust bag and shot forward.  Before Rey could flinch, her eyes were burning and the world had gone dark.

She screamed in pain, swiping at her eyes with one hand while slashing at the air in front of her with the other.  The blindness was short-lived and after rubbing furiously at her eyes for a few seconds she could see the room again, though it was blurry and her eyes still burned.  The divan was empty.

Rey let out another scream, this time enraged, and raced through the open door and down the steps.  She burst through the entryway and skidded to a stop, searching up and down the street, her eyes still watering.  It was deserted—except for the hunched over figure of Finn and the familiar robed figure beside him.

“Kriff!” she growled. “Kriff! Kriff! Kriff!”

She ran towards the pair of dark figures.

“Did you see her?” she demanded.  “She must have just come out.  Which way did she run?”

“Who—what now?” Finn asked glancing up in surprise.

“You lost her?” Master Luke asked, his voice incredulous.  “You ran in there with no surveillance, no back-up, no plan—I presume, and then you lose her? What were you even thinking?  Do you know how dangerous it is to walk into a blind alley alone?”

“We can still catch her!” Rey insisted.  “She can’t have gone far!”

With the street deserted, Rey glanced upwards, towards the roofs.  It would have been difficult to escape across a row of roofs that were conical, but there was a walkway from one of them leading to the bell tower—one of many which were used to signal the raider warnings—and she might have—

“You won’t catch her!” Master Luke scoffed.  “This is an outlaw town, even the back doors have back doors.”

“We have to! She can contact them—the Knights of Ren!  She can lead them here, right into a trap that we set for them and then… and then…” distracted by the sound of her own heart beating, loudly and irregularly in her chest, Rey lost her train of thought.

“She’s probably contacting them even as you speak!” Master Luke growled.  “If they come here, which they very well may, we will be vastly outnumbered—and in their territory, keep in mind.  They’re heroes to these people!”

“But—“

“No! I am sick and tired of you doing whatever it is that you feel like doing.  Jedi do NOT—“

“They don’t what?” Rey challenged, feeling the direction of her rage shift like a changing tide.  “They don’t lie?  They don’t use other people like tools?  They don’t make allies out of evil-doers?  What is it that Jedi don’t do again, Master?”

Master Luke shook his head slowly as he stared at her.

“What’s happened?” he asked slowly.  “That woman did something to you, didn’t she?  I can feel it—there’s something off.  Your energy is sporadic and unfocused and—“

“And dark?” she guessed.  “Like his was?”

“No,” Master Luke said immediately.  “You were drugged.  There’s something wrong with your eyes.  We need to get you back to the ship and off of this planet.”

“No,” Rey shook her head.  “No. I won’t. I won’t go with you.  I won’t put everyone I care about in danger anymore.  I won’t be your tool—your bait for Kylo Ren either! I won’t be lied to. What was your plan for me—once you blew up the base on Hoth, that is?  You wouldn’t bring me back to the Resistance to put them all in danger again, would you?”

“She _knew_ about that?” Finn demanded, glancing up at Master Luke.  “You told me I wasn’t allowed to say anything!”  He hiccupped and shook his head as though very disappointed.

“I advised you to rest and meditate so that you could strengthen and train your internal defenses,” Master Luke spoke slowly and clearly.  “You did not do as I asked.”

“You could have told me that Kylo Ren was in my head!” she cried, raising her voice.

“And then what?  Be honest with yourself, Rey.  What would you have done then?  If you had known that your presence put the Resistance in danger you would have lit out there so fast—“

“So what?  Our people DIED on Crait, they died on—“

“Every single one of our people know the risk that they’re taking.  Every one of our people have chosen to follow Leia and—“

“If I hadn’t been there on Crait, the First Order wouldn’t have found us!”

“Rey,” Master Luke said in a soothing tone, “we need to get on the ship now.  We need to leave.  We can discuss all of this, but we need to get you medical attention and—“

“No.  I’m not going.  I’m not going to wait for Kylo Ren to hunt me down and kill every person that I care about.  I will hunt HIM down.  I will find him and I will make him answer for what he has done!”

“Rey…” Master Luke held his hand out and took a few slow steps towards her.

“No,” Rey whispered and glanced upward.  She saw the bell tower again and knew what she had to do.  She closed her eyes and focused.

The bell clanged loudly, ringing out again and again.  Rey opened her eyes and stared calmly back at Master Luke. 

Other bells from across the city picked up the alarm and began to ring.  The entire town of Ka’vec seemed to reverberate with the sound of them—and then came the stampede.  The sound of thousands of panicked feet, all running for the gates, for escape.

“Rey!” Master Luke yelled and reached for her, but Rey snatched her arm away and ran.  She met the advance of fleeing citizens a few seconds later and lost herself in the crowd, allowing their movement to dictate hers.  She was being pushed out through the city gates to where the ships and the escape pods were.  Master Luke and Finn were gone.

She knew what she had to do, and she would not flinch from it.

Just outside the gates, she broke free of the fleeing herd and raced between the ships.  She spotted the Zygerrian ship right away—its features were easily identifiable.  There was also a few light freighters, which she quickly passed by— she knew what she was looking for.  The men she needed to find would most likely fly a mid-sized, nondescript, transporter.  This they would use for shuttling their captured slaves to and from a much larger cargo barge.  She couldn’t be certain, but if she had to guess she would say they were Karazak Slavers.

Her guess soon proved true as she caught sight of an old Kom’rk class fighter/transport—it was rather banged-up. A battle-scarred old vessel to be sure, but that made sense given the sort of missions it probably flew. 

There was also the fact that Eye Patch raced past her toward the ship.  Rey was surprised by his speed, but then… her legs weren’t quite working the way they should, or maybe the ground wasn’t staying put, she wasn’t sure.  All the same, she was getting on that ship, even if she had to drag herself through the mud.

She had no plan for gaining passage, and the ability to focus long enough to make one was currently alluding her, but as luck would have it, no plan was necessary.

Eye Patch stopped before reaching the ship, as though it had suddenly occurred to him that he had left something behind. He leaned back, cupping his hands around his mouth as he bellowed into the chaos of the night:

“SAFE PASSAGE!  SAFE PASSAGE HERE FOR 27! HURRY, HURRY!”

He sounded for all the worlds like a price barker at the Undermarket—and his wares were just as suspicious.  Safe passage from a slaver!  Even in the state she was in, Rey almost chuckled at his daring.

Most of those fleeing at the sound of the bells paid him no mind, but a few took his offer.  Rey grit her teeth and forced her stiff legs to move, one in front of the other.

“Safe passage?” she called out, as she approached him.

“Aye!  Hurry now!” he assured her, giving her a quick once over, no doubt taking in her bloodshot and watering eyes, her staggering footsteps and the way her words slurred together.

The fact that her condition has severely weakened her ability to defend herself certainly occurred to her as she stumbled up the ramp, but the remarkable thing was that it had also deadened her ability to feel fear.

As she shuffled behind the line of those who had come aboard, she noted that two of the crewmen directing them had blasters and kept eyeing each other furtively.  Any moment now…

The sound of the ramp raising behind them must have been the signal.  The men stopped and turned their blasters toward the group of refugees while more crew swarmed from their hiding places among the cargo.

There were shrieks, cries, cursing, bodies pushing against hers as the others tried to flee… where they thought they could run to, who could say?

Through it all, Rey stood still, waiting.  When the iron collar clanged around her neck, she did not flinch or even glance up at the crewman fitting her.  She allowed herself to be led by the chain attached to her collar, and uttered no protest when she was searched, and the lightsaber was removed from her belt, or later, when the chain was secured to a metal ring on the floor of the passenger hold.

While others around her cried silently, or begged their sneering captors, Rey lowered herself carefully to sit cross-legged on the floor and wait for the pain in her eyes and the confusion in her brain to subside.

Two thoughts sustained her in her discomfort—First, that she was on her way to the Knights of Ren and second, that she was going to make Kylo Ren pay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slave Rey??? I mean think about it, if she wants to utterly destroy him all she needs is a metal bikini.  
> Kylo: Ah! So hot... but... mommy issues... turned on... but so... disgusted with myself... *brain implodes*


	6. Confrontation

The grind of metal on metal caused fresh wails of terror to sweep through the passenger hold.  Rey opened her burning eyes.  She knew what that sound meant.  The transport had docked with its cargo barge.  The arrival of several rough-looking crewmembers confirmed as much.

She had hoped that the Resurrection Dust would have begun to wear off before she was forced to move again, but her vision was still blurry and her mind clouded.  She did find, however, that when the chain around her neck was yanked, pulling her to her feet, she was a bit steadier on them.

The newly-captured slaves were corralled into a single file line, and escorted off the transport at blaster point.  Rey tried to remember which of the crewmen had taken her lightsaber, but all the faces she saw were far too blurry to make note of any distinctive features—all faces, excepting of course, the one that belonged to Eye Patch.  She recognized him the moment she started down the transport ramp.  He waited just beyond the bottom of the ramp and as the line of prisoners approached he began to separate them, one from the other.

Rey squinted in an attempt to sharpen her focus.  Eye Patch sent the first two prisoners, human men, to the left, the next—a theelin woman—he shoved to the right.  The next, a young, likely teenaged, twi’lek male he also sent to the right.  She watched the group on the left as it grew.  So far, these had all been men—strong-looking men at that.  Eye Patch was likely separating the ones who could be sold as fighters from the weaker, household sort of servants.

The closer she came to him, the more of his words she overheard.  Sometimes, he would simply shove the prisoner one way or the other.  At other times, he would seem to think over his decision or ask questions.  The line advanced quickly.

“Human or Bimm?” he demanded of the young man directly in front of her.

“Bimm,” the man answered quickly.

“Oh that’s no good now, is it?  Your kind ain’t much use on a battlefield,” Eye Patch grumbled.  “I don’t suppose you speak any other languages?”

“Bimmini,” the man replied.

Eye Patch scoffed.

“Bimm’s is good story-tellers though!” One of the crewmen called out.  “I heard Hutts will pay for ‘em occasionally.”

“Alright.  Entertainment then,” Eye Patch decided, shoving the young man roughly to the right side.

As Rey stepped forward, he eyed her up and down, and pursed his lips in thought.

“I suppose you’ll clean up well enough,” he muttered.

“Look at the eyes though!” the same crewmen called out.  “Spicehead likely.”

“There’ll be time enough for her to dry out.  Can you dance, girl?”

“Certainly not!” Rey snapped. “I’m trained to… to fight.”

Eye Patch gave a hearty chuckle at this.

“Right.  See what she looks like cleaned up,” he demanded, giving her chain a yank towards the right.

Rey planted her feet.  The jerk he gave her neck, made the room spin.

“I said, I can fight,” she stated calmly, making eye contact with him.

“Good.  That’s a skill that’ll stand ya in good stead when you’re trying to keep the Hutts slimy paws off of ya,” he sneered, reaching out to shove her hard to the right.

Rey pivoted, causing Eye Patch to lurch drunkenly forward.  She lunged, taking him by surprise, and head-butted him in the face.

Eye Patch screamed in rage and covered his face with his hands as he stumbled back.  Rey noted with satisfaction that blood was seeping between his fingers.  She hoped she had broken his nose.

“I said I can fight!” she repeated through clenched teeth.  She drew a breath and attempted to still her emotions and focus her energy.  “You are convinced and will group me with the slaves you are intending to sell to the Knights of Ren.”

She had not abandoned the Resistance and thrown herself into danger to be sold to some backplanet Hutt as a dancing girl!  The Knights of Ren were likely searching for more acolytes and had stooped to buying them off of slavers.

The other crewmen advanced and seized her by the arms. One of the men hauled back and brought his huge fist crashing down into the side of her face.  Her blurry vision exploded with stars.

“Careful! CAREFUL!” Eye Patch yelled, his voice muffled by the fact that he still held his hands over his face.  “Mess up her face and she’s worth nothing!”

Rey could taste blood in her mouth, and knew that if the crewmen weren’t holding her up, she would probably have collapsed on the floor.

“Clean her up and see how she looks, but don’t waste any bacta until we know exactly what the Knights are looking for,” Eye Patch ordered.

With that, she was dragged away.

It hadn’t worked!  She had focused her intent and made eye contact and his will had not bent upon hers.  He had caved so easily at the tavern!  For not the first or the last time, Rey silently cursed the woman Amalia, in her head.  It had to be the dust which had so weakened her.

She did not have long to think on it, as she soon heard the rusty yawn of a metal door opening, and was then thrown into a cell.  The door slammed shut.

The Theelin woman Rey had seen earlier leaned against the wall watching her.  Her purple hair fell in long loose strands from a messy bun that had slipped far down the side of her head.

“That’s going to swell shut,” the woman said, her voice soft and heavily accented.

Rey reached up to feel the metal collar around her neck, her fingers working to find a bolt or catch.

“That won’t work,” the woman said sadly. “What’s your name?”

“Rey,” Rey muttered, her hands falling uselessly to her sides.

“I should have known better,” the woman sighed, shaking her head, “Nobody gives anything for free, least of all passage of that rock.  I’m Talya.”

Ignoring her, Rey attempted to stand only to fall back down as he knees gave way.

“You’re sick, aren’t you?  It’s hard coming down off the spice, isn’t it?” Talya soothed, crouching beside Rey to help her sit up.  “Stars!  Look at your face! Did they hit you?”

“Yes,” Rey growled.

Bright overhead lights glowed to life as the cell door reopened.  Rey’s eyes smarted as she squinted against them.

A crewman entered first, followed by a blue-skinned Twi’lek girl in an iron collar.  A swath of sheer fabric wrapped around her hips and girdled with a low hanging, ornamental belt, and a second strip of fabric tied around her chest left little to the imagination.  She was carrying a bundle of what looked to be rags and a large pitcher.

“Right then ladies, time to inspect the goods—see what we’ve got to work with here,” the crewman sneered.

The light had illuminated the room so that Rey could now see the large basin melded to the floor beside them.  The Twi’lek girl opened a tap to begin filling the tub with water, and then poured thick, bubbling foam into to it from her pitcher.  Once she had emptied the pitcher, she set it aside and lifted the individual scraps of fabric from the bundle and began to lay them out.  She did not make eye contact with either of the prisoners while doing so. Talya hissed slightly under her breath.

These were not rags.  These were intended to be clothes, similar to those worn by the Twi’lek girl.

“Start with the ugly one,” the crewman demanded.  “We’ll see if its worth the bacta to fix ‘er face.”

The Twi’lek girl bobbed her head and approached Rey with downcast eyes.  She reached out one slender hand which Rey shoved away.

“Careful with that one—she bites!” the crewman sneered.

“I’ll clean myself up.  Turn around and go,” Rey ordered, again trying to focus her power.

“Have we kidnapped the very Princess of Ka’vec, is that it?” the crewman laughed.  “I think not, love.  You’ll do as I say.”  He turned impatiently to the Twi’lek girl who stood with her head bowed.  “Strip her clothes.”

It was at that moment, with her face bruised and swollen, her powers useless, her body weak, and the slave girl reluctantly reaching for her that Rey again felt the dark energy.  It was outside of her, it was everywhere and it wanted to be drawn in, it wanted to be used.

She could not restrain the slight gasp that escaped her lips.  She had not felt it since Korriban—that power that had so damaged her body, almost killing her.  It was always there.  Master Luke had said as much, but had also warned her never to take in, to use it again.  He needn’t have.  She was afraid of it, afraid of what it had done to her.  Now her anger outweighed her fear, and she exhaled slowly, closing her eyes while opening herself to the Darkness.  She could feel it flowing into her, her mind clearing.  She opened her eyes as best she could to stare levelly at the smirking crewmen.

“We can do this this easy way—“ he began lifting his blaster threateningly.

Rey smiled.

“No.  We won’t do this at all,” she said calmly.

She lifted her hand, but the man had already crossed the room.  Rey glanced up at him just in time to see the butt end of his blaster being brought down and then… darkness.

Darkness.

It was as though the blow had forced her through the floor and into a void where she floated comfortably.  Her head ached, and her eye still felt swollen, but the weakness in her legs and the burning sensation caused by the dust were gone.  She could move her legs and arms, but it felt as though she were moving them through water.  She wondered briefly if drawing in the dark force had killed her this time—her body had been so damaged by it after all.  Perhaps this was what happened when a dark user became one with the Force.  Perhaps they spent eternity drifting in a void of nothingness.

Just as the idea began to scare her, a dull glow caught her attention.  The more she focused on it, the closer it came, and then the darkness around her became walls and a floor and a ceiling—a room.  A dimly lit room with reflective black walls and glowing strips of red floor lighting.

His voice was quiet at first, barely above a whisper.  Yet the harder she listened, the louder it became until she could understand his words.

Kylo Ren paced the length of the room with General Hux trailing slowly behind him.

“There was no one!” Hux seethed.  “You were wrong this time, Ren, and I’ve lost men.  Capable men!  Sent them into a trap—ON YOUR ORDERS!”

The General was very angry, his face burned almost as red as his hair.

Kylo stopped and turned abruptly to face him.

“I don’t like your tone, General,” he warned, his voice deceptively calm.

“Sir…” Hux began, visibly swallowing as if trying to keep the rage from his voice.  “The First Order MUST maintain discipline and my men are already beginning to question the missions they’ve been sent on.  We do not have the resources to destroy the Resistance and control the Outer Rim planets and conquer Hutt space.  We lost two battalions of highly trained soldiers to that trick the Resistance fighters played on Hoth.  Supreme Leader Snoke would have never—“

General Hux gagged on his words as Kylo Ren lifted his hand and clenched his fist.

“I… will…not…have…you…”Kylo hissed, stressing each word, “questioning…my…”

He stopped, his lip faltering slightly as he stared directly into her eyes.  She saw his own eyes widen, as though he were seeing something that horrified him.  The General collapsed to ground, coughing.

He could see her?

She stepped back almost reflexively, as if he could flee, and realized for the first time that her foot was bare—that indeed, both her legs were bare.  She wore only the flimsiest swathes of fabric, just as the Twi’lek girl had, and there was a heavy weight around her neck—the iron collar, of course.

Panicking, she took another step back, wrapping her arms around herself, trying to cover as much as she could.

“Get out,” Kylo said, his voice a low growl.  “Out!”

He turned away from her, casting his eyes to the floor and scowling as though it had mortally offended him.  The General wasted no time scrambling to his feet and escaping through the door.

“You can see me, can’t you?” Rey asked, her voice sounding small and frightened in that room.

Kylo lifted his head, smirked, and turned to follow General Hux out.

“No,” she said.  “Stop!”

She ran to catch up to him.  This time, the floor stayed solid beneath her feet.  She reached him.  She was directly behind him, and without thinking, she snatched his arm—and held.  He was solid and real.  Not like a dream or a vision at all.

Kylo Ren froze, but did not turn around.

“You can see me,” she repeated.  “I know that you can.”

She felt it where she held him—a very faint tremble, a shiver maybe, a reaction to her words.

“You’ve been blocking me,” she realized. “And when you can’t block me, you… pretend you can’t see me.”

“What do you want from me, scavenger?” he growled.

“You left me to die on Korriban,” she accused, her voice shaking.

“I did no such thing,” he replied.  “I was simply upholding my end of the bargain.”

“Bargain?”

“You gave me your help in defeating Snoke in order to be returned to your true Master—was that not what you asked of me?” he reminded her.

That had been what she’d asked for, but that was before… before everything that had happened between them—the shyrack cave, the visions in Snoke’s chamber... she shook her head slowly.

“I was in no condition to be—“

“Your condition is no concern of mine-- _was_ … it was no concern of mine,” he corrected himself.

“Look at me!” she demanded.  “Turn around and face me, you coward!”

He did as she asked, and when, looking up at him, her eyes met his, she instantly forgot the next insult she had meant to hurl.  His words were cruel, his face stoic, but his eyes—his eyes were haunted, and they burned into her.

She dropped his arm, and backed away, not trusting herself to be that close to him.  He was a masterful manipulator, she reminded herself.

“I’ll ask you again, scavenger, what do you want from me?”  His gaze moved from her eyes, to the collar at her neck, and finally, to her barely clad body.  “It appears you’re in some sort of desperate situation.  Where are you?”

“Can’t you discover that for yourself?” she taunted. “I mean, up until now you’ve had no problem digging locations from my head.”

“An amusing trick you played on Hoth.  How long have you known?” he smirked.

Rey flinched.  She hadn’t know, of course.  It was Master Luke who had guessed.  Kylo read her reaction correctly.  He smirked and nodded his head.

“I see.  You didn’t know, did you?  Your _friends_ used you without you even realizing it.”

“They had to!” she insisted, forgetting her own anger with them in her need to defend them from him.  “The First Order is trying to wipe them out—YOU are trying to destroy them.”

“If I wanted them destroyed, then rest assured, I would have ended them by now!”

“You nearly wiped all of us out on Crait!” she accused.  “If Master Luke hadn’t—“

“Yes, nearly, but you were not pursued when you fled.”

“What game are you playing at now?” she demanded.

Instead of answering, he clasped his hands lightly behind his back and stared down at her.  She felt her face burn, and avoided his eyes.

“Wherever you are now, Rey, you aren’t with the Resistance, and they’d of never let you wander off by yourself—you’re far too valuable to them.  You’re a recruitment tool—the newest little Jedi.  I wonder if you’ve seen the other side of the Resistance, the side which General Organa prefers stays hidden.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow.  He lifted his hand, and Rey, conditioned from so many recent blows to the face, flinched away.  He froze, his hand merely inches from her swollen cheek, and from the way he pressed his lips together as he studied her, it almost looked as though her reaction had hurt him in some way.  “What’s happened to you, Rey?” His voice was gentle.

“What’s happened to you?” she demanded, daring to glance up at him again.  “I thought you wanted to end Snoke for the good of everyone.  I thought you had it in you to—“

“To what, Rey? To humble myself?  To come back to Master Luke and beg him to forgive me?  To join your pitiful Resistance and lick General Organa’s boot before she marches over the poor and enslaved for what she deems is the good of all?  Is that what you imagined would happen?”

Rey shook her head, though he wasn’t far from the truth.  She had wasted her time in daydreams on that last day.  She had held the image of herself returning with Ben Solo close to her heart.  She had been naïve.

“Was that really all you wanted from me?  Was I just a tool you used to destroy Snoke?” she asked, her voice raw.

“No,” he replied, and his hand moved to gently caress the side of her face. “The Resistance uses you even now.  To them you are a tool, but to me you are… you are…” His voice trailed off.

“What?” she asked, hating herself for wanting those words.  He was a liar.  He was surely taking advantage of the feelings that he sensed in her, and nothing more.

“You need to see them for what they are,” he insisted, his hand falling away.  “You have to choose for yourself who you will stand beside, and I can feel it, Rey, every time I look at you, I can feel it. You will chose to stand beside me.”

She scoffed.

“What am I to you?” she demanded, willing him to finish his thought.

He scowled and turned away, but she caught his arm and pulled, forcing him to face her.

“Kylo!”

He snatched her by both shoulders and his grip was fierce enough to hurt, though he still did not speak.

“What am I to you?” she repeated, staring up at him, determined not to show fear.

“You are my blood arrow,” he whispered.  His face was dangerously close to hers.

Confused, Rey shook her head.

“I don’t—“

When he kissed her, it was with a ferocity that took the air from her lungs, and when he pressed her to himself, her body remembered at once the feel of his, and the heat that came from him, and oh but she wanted to melt!  She knew too well that his hands would move to her body in the next instant, and then he would… he would…

It was the prostitute from Ka’vec that saved her from her own weakness.  The memory of the woman’s smirking visage as she suggested that Kylo Ren likely took her on the floor was enough to freeze whatever flames he had managed to rekindle in her.  She shoved him roughly away.

“Your blood arrow, is it?  How many of those do you have?  I met one on Ka’vec not so long ago!” she spat.

His eyes widened at her words, and she noted with satisfaction the rise and fall of his wide chest as he struggled to catch his breath.  He had not expected her to resist him.

“Rey you don’t know what—“

“I DO know.  I know more than you think I do,” she accused.

His fists clenched.

“Where are you?” he demanded.  “Tell me where you are.  Who is it that did this to you?”

“You don’t need to concern yourself with that,” she said.  She could feel the darkness around her again-- almost as though her anger called it to her.  “You don’t need to try and find me, because I’ll find you.  I’ll find you, and I promise you that when I do, it will not be so that I can stand beside you.”

“Rey, I—“

She drew the darkness in and expelled it in almost the same moment.  The last thing she saw was his hand shoot up to deflect the blow.  The room exploded into darkness and she was once again adrift.

 

 

Alone now, Kylo fell back, panting from both the effort of deflecting the final blow and from restraining himself through the entire encounter.  Even though she was gone, he could still see her in his mind—her slim, barely-clad form, her swollen and bruised face, the iron collar heavy around her neck.

With a growl of anger and frustration, he snatched the lightsaber from his belt, igniting it mid-stroke to cut through the console beside him.  Again and again he slashed, ignoring the sparks that flew until the board was nothing more than a smoking ruin.

In a final burst of anger, he flung the light saber hilt at the far wall, and stabbed the comm button nearest to him.

“HUX!” he screamed.

The General was slow to answer, enraging him all the more.

“Supreme Leader?” he asked at last.

“Prepare my transport!”


	7. Rescued

Unfamiliar voices speaking in hushed tones alerted Rey to the fact that she was awake—that and a hot, throbbing pain which seemed to cover the entire left side of her face.  She tried opening her eyes and was surprised to find that only one of them worked.  She could see the purple-haired Theelin girl from before in profile.  She was far less blurry than Rey remembered.

Rey opened her mouth to speak.  The action cause pain to shoot down her jaw, so that only a strange sort of strangled moan came out.  It caught the girl’s attention though.

“You’re awake,” she noted.

“Owww. Yes,” Rey agreed.

“Your face looks… pretty bad.”

“It certainly feels bad,” Rey murmured.  In an attempt to gauge the damage, she lightly prodded the swollen mass around her closed eye, and gasped at the resulting pang that shot through her skull.

“Well, don’t touch it, you’ll make it worse!” The girl insisted.

“What happened?”

“You gave a slaver lip and he gave you the butt end of his gun—you definitely came out behind in that deal.  Then you were washed and dressed and after that, they threw us in here.”

“Here… where’s here?”

Rey blinked her good eye a few times and turned her head so that the swollen side of her face lay against the cold floor.  The cell was dimly lit, but she could sense that they were not alone.  In fact, she could sense many things… fear… uncertainty… anxiety bordering on panic… feelings that came from all around her.  It was uncomfortable, but at least her abilities had returned.  Her head was far clearer than before.

“Doesn’t matter,” she mumbled, answering herself as she sat up.  Her head spun and throbbed in response.

The new cell was larger than the last, and had several more occupants.  Iron rings set into the floor served as tethering points for the chains that hung from their neck collars.  Most of these slaves sat or hunched dejectedly in small groups around their rings.  She counted at least two dozen and among those a few she recognized from the transporter.  The Theelin girl—whose name Rey felt like she should know— and the young man who had earlier identified himself as a Bimm, were chained to the same hold as herself.

“How long was I out?” she asked, trying to feel around the point where the chain and her neck collar met.

“Who can say?  The time it took for them to bathe and dress you and then however long we’ve been in here.  Maybe hours, maybe days,” the girl shrugged.

“Definitely not days,” the young man countered.  “My bladder wouldn’t allow for that.  I’d guess four hours at most.”

Rey nodded and tugged at the chain.  Solid, of course.  She stood, testing the limit of her captivity and found that she could move only a few steps.

“Sit down!” the Theelin girl hissed nervously.

Rey glanced around.  Her movements had attracted the attention of the other slaves, who now watched her nervously.  There was only one door to the cell and she was about 12 paces from it—granted that was about 10 more paces then she was currently able to take, but having been held in far more confining accommodations, definitely not insurmountable.  She crouched down again, closer to the young man.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Albion.  Albion Bard, and you’re Rey, or so Talya says,” he nodded towards the purple-haired girl.

“Albion… is there a guard posted outside that door?”

“I’m not certain, but I don’t think so.  I’ve heard footsteps coming from the corridor three times so far.  The first time was when they brought you in. The second time, they stopped outside the door and then carried on.  The third time, the same thing, stopped just outside the door for a moment. I didn’t hear any words exchanged, so if I had to guess, I’d say there’s maybe one or two of them that round between the cells every so often.”

Rey nodded.

“They’ll have to bring in food or water at some point,” she mumbled.

“Well, one can hope I suppose,” Albion shrugged.  “Though I’m not holding my breath.  From what I overheard, this barge is supposed to rendezvous with another Karazak Guild ship before arriving at a slaver’s market on Lothal.  It isn’t a long trip, so I very much doubt they’ll shoulder the expense of feeding all their cargo and-”

“You must’ve heard wrong,” Rey cut him off.  “These men are gathering slaves to fill a contract with the Knights of Ren.”

Talya scoffed and shook her head.

“The Knights of Ren, is it?  Now I’ve heard everything!”

“It’s true.  I heard the man with the eye patch say it,” Rey said simply.

“Not likely!” Talya snapped.  “The Knights PROTECT the weak and the disadvantaged.  They’ve come to our aid twice on Ka’vec, and I’ve heard stories of their deeds from travelers coming from all over the galaxy.  Buying slaves indeed!  You must still have the spice in your system!”

“No, she’s telling the truth.  I heard the captain mention the Knights as well,” Albion confirmed.  “Though my impression is that there was no definite agreement—they weren’t sure what type of slaves these Knights were looking for, and if they had an agreement, they would likely know all the particulars. I would guess that they’re hoping to meet up with these buyers on Lothal—because, I’m quite certain, that’s where we’re headed.  I heard a crewman complaining about it on board the transporter.”

“The Captain said Bimm’s aren’t good fighters.  You seem to be very good at gathering intel,” Rey said, offering him a half-smile.

“We’re storytellers, mostly,” he agreed.  “If you hope to be any good at telling stories, you have to be a good listener first.”

Rey nodded, and glanced around again.  With no guards, no weapon, and no way of obtaining one at present, it seemed the only thing she could do, was wait.  Besides, if she were to free herself, what about the others?  She couldn’t risk freeing all of them—the ship would never make it to Lothal and she would miss her chance at the Knights of Ren.  Comforted, that for the moment, she was exactly where she out to be, Rey again sat down.

“Tell us a story then,” Talya demanded, rapping her knuckles on the floor to get Albion’s attention.  “We’ve nothing to do but sit, so tell us a story to help pass the time.”

“Alright,” Albion agreed.  “Which story will it be then? Ah!  I know!  The tale of Oola the slave girl’s last dance—“

“Kriff, no!” Talya growled.  “That’s the last story I want to hear, dressed like a dancing girl, probably on my way to some ugly Hutt’s palace!  Pick another.”

“Very well, the tale of the how Luke Skywalker destroyed the death st-“

“NO!” Rey interrupted.  “Not that one.”

“Tough crowd,” Albion sighed and closed his eyes, thinking.  “I’ve got it!  It’s an old story not much told these days… the tragic death of Cress Thul.”

“Well there you’ve already gone and given the end away in the title,” Talya taunted.

Albion scowled which almost made Rey smile—almost.

“It’s a beautiful story about love and loss and… and…” As Albion’s voice trailed off, he cocked his head to the side, listening.  Rey knew better than to ask what it was.  She held a silencing hand up to Talya and turned towards the door.

She heard nothing at first—but it occurred to her that perhaps the Bimms were such good listeners not due to patience, but because their hearing was exceptionally well-developed, so she waited.  Not a minute went by before she heard it—the sound of a blaster being fired, and not long after, came distant shouts.

“What is it?!” Talya whispered.

“Escaped slaves?” Rey guessed.

“Maybe,” Albion said, though his expression suggested that he did not think so.

More shouts and then the sound of many feet running through the corridor, blaster fire, chains rattling, and then someone was at the door of their cell.

“Oh, no!  No, no, no!” Talya cried, backing away as far as her chain would allow. “Don’t let them come in here, don’t let them—“

The door burst open, and two wild-eyed, young men stumbled over one another entering the room.

“If you value your freedom, stand up now!  Stand and fight for it!” the first one shouted.

No one moved.  The prisoners remained sitting on the floor, staring up at the newcomers-- some with their mouths hanging open, others with expressions of obvious mistrust.

“Maybe they don’t understand,” the second one decided.  “Here, look!”

He grabbed the shoulder of the scrawny, red-skinned man sitting closed to him, and hauled him to his feet. Quickly, he lowered his blaster and shot through the chain, freeing the slave.

The prisoners gasped when the blaster went off.  The newly freed slave glanced between his neighbors and his rescuers as though trying to decide which of the two presented less of a risk.

“See?”  the first would-be hero announced.  “He’s free!”

This would not do!  She had no idea who these men were or what they planned to do with the prisoners, but it was likely enough that they would no longer be heading for the slave market on Lothal, which was currently the only chance she had to find the Knights of Ren.  Though it occurred to her that it was very wrong to foil the other prisoners chance at freedom, she pushed this thought down with the vague reassurance that she would probably figure out a way to free them herself once they had reached Lothal.

“Free to do what?” she asked.  “Are you trying to take over the ship?”

“No, we’re… we’re with the Resistance,” the First announced.

“We don’t have time for this!” the second interrupted.  “We’ve got to go!”

“So you want to free us so that we can do… what, exactly?”

“Escape!  Don’t you want to escape?”

“To where, exactly?” Rey frowned.

“Isn’t any place better than here?” the second demanded.

“Not necessarily,” Albion remarked.

“We’re with the Resistance!”  the first announced, as though this should clear everything up.

Rey groaned.

“So what you want us to do—just so that I understand—is run through this ship, completely unarmed, while the slavers chase after us, likely shooting at us, to get to a ship that you have standing by, which will then have to take off from a secure bay, and then flee, likely under heavy fire from this barge’s cannons so that we can— go where, exactly?” Rey asked politely.

Beside her, Albion chuckled.

“Join… the Resistance?” the first answered, though his voice sounded somewhat uncertain.

“Thanks, I think I’ll take my chances with the slavers,” Talya scoffed.

The first Resistance fight snorted and then began to shout encouragement of the sort Rey had heard before, ‘fight for yourselves’, ‘stand up to the oppressors’, and so on and so forth.  Albion leaned towards her and dropped his voice.

“Does it seem strange that it’s so quiet to you?” he asked.

Rey thought about it.  Before the Resistance fighters had entered, they had heard the sounds of what sounded like a struggle.  If the fighters had managed to land their ship and then overcome the crewmen that patrolled the outer corridor, then it seemed likely that they would quickly be discovered, and that the other slavers would be coming after them.  Yet the outer corridor was silent.  Stranger still, the two fighters did not appear to her to exude either the fear or adrenaline one would expect in such a situation.

Almost as if in answer to her thoughts, running footsteps echoed loudly in the outer hall, there was someone—no, more than just one person running towards the cell.  She looked again to the Resistance fighters.  Surely they heard this as well, but neither turned or raised their guns.

Poe Dameron raced into the room, blaster in hand.

“Come on, COME ON!” he urged, seizing the prisoner nearest to him and blasting through his chain.  “What is the hold up? We’ve got seven minutes left!”

He straightened up reaching for the next prisoner and glancing up his eyes met hers.  Rey stifled a curse word.

“Rey!” he yelled, his eyes lightening up and then, sweeping across her body growing wide in surprise.  He grinned.  “Nice costume!”

“Poe this isn’t what you—“she began, but he had already ran across the room and hauled her to her feet.

With one arm wrapped securely around her back, he raised the other and shot through her chain.  It happened faster than she could protest, and just as the words came to her mouth, she made eye contact with Albion who was watching her very closely.

“What are you doing here?” Poe demanded, signaling to the other two fighters that they should commence freeing the prisoners. 

Around them, the other slaves were beginning to move nervously, some, getting to their feet already.  The Resistance was about to ruin everything.

“You don’t understand!” she hissed into Poe’s ear.  “I’m undercover as a slave, I’m trying to get ta a market on Lothal.  Master Luke knows, you have to leave me here!”

Poe’s expression was confused.

“There’s far better ways to do that, you know.  The Resistance has allies there.  We could fly you in and--  look at your face!  Did they beat you?”  he was leading her towards the door.  Rey planted her feet.

“No, I can’t, you don’t understand!  I can’t go back to the Resistance, I can’t!  Kylo Ren can find me and if you does than you’ll all die.  You don’t—“

“I know,” he agreed calmly.

“You… you know?” Rey asked, uncertain.

“Yeah,” he glanced down sheepishly. “Luke figured it out after what happened on Crait.  We divided our resources after that.  General Organa took a few volunteers to Hoth as a decoy, and Master Luke worked on building up our forces at… another location.  Hoth was a trap.  Once the First Order showed up, we blew the base and took out about two battalion of—“

“You knew the whole time?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

“I did,” he agreed.  “I volunteered to go with the General to Hoth.  I didn’t like it, lying to you, I mean, but Luke said that if you knew, you’d run in order to protect the Resistance, and I…” he stopped, his head cocking to the side as if a thought had occurred to him.  “That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?  You found out and you ran.”

“No.  I’m on a mission.”

“Then I’ll help you.”

“No.”

“I’m not asking, I’m telling you,” Poe scowled.

Rey was about to argue, but glancing around at the other prisoners, her guilt resurfaced.  If they had a shot to escape, it would be beyond wrong to prevent that merely to further he own ends, especially if Poe agreed that she could still go to Lothal.

Newly freed, Talya and Albion came to stand beside her.

“Alright, fine, but I have to get my lightsaber back, one of the guards took it from me when I was—“

“We have to go, and we have to go now!” Poe interrupted.  “We have four minutes before the bay door closes.”

One arm still around her, he led them into the corridor, glancing both ways and raising his blaster as though expecting an attack, the other fighters had almost finished freeing the other prisoners.

“Come on!” he ordered and broke into a jog, dragging her along with him.

They passed other cells doors as they went, which Rey could feel contained other prisoners.

“What about the rest of them?” she asked.

“There isn’t time!” Poe insisted.

A few minutes later, the group entered the docking bay where the Resistance transporter waited.  They had not seen one single crewmember between their cell and the waiting ship, and the sense of something being very off had only grown stronger.

“Where is everyone?” Rey wondered.  “Shouldn’t someone be trying to stop us?”

“Let’s not look at stars while the city’s burning!” Poe insisted dragging her towards the transporter ramp.

Rey glanced around again at the empty dock.

Poe led the group on board, dropping her into the nearest seat before heading back to the ramp.

“Where are you going?” Rey demanded, jumping to her feet.

“Stay here!  I’ll be RIGHT back!” Poe insisted, racing down the entry ramp.

She would have followed him, but Albion and Talya, both nervous, and uncertain, had remained close to her side, and she feared they would follow her.

“Does this rescue seem strange to you?” Albion asked.

“A little,” Rey agreed.

“Like, shouldn’t someone be trying to stop us?” he prodded.

“One would think so.”

“I’ll bet you we’re traded a flame for a fire,” Talya growled.  “Mark me, the minute we’re off this ship, they’ll tell us we’re now their prisoners.”

Rey watched the ramp intently as the rest of the prisoners hurried up it and found seats.  The two fighters came on board last—one of them racing towards the front of the ship, while the other positioned himself at the ramp watching, gun in hand.

“Two minutes!” Someone called from the front of the ship.

Rey turned her head, but couldn’t discern who the speaker was through the crowd of slaves moving to find seats.

The man guarding the ramp fidgeted nervously craning his neck as if trying to see around something out on the dock.

She counted the seconds down in her head.  Where had Poe gone?

“One minute!” someone shouted.

The man at the ramp, placed one hand on the switch which raised the ramp, the other kept his blaster firmly pointed out at the dock.

“Come on, Poe,” she murmured under her breath.

“Thirty seconds!”

The fighter hit the ramp switch, and the door slowly began to raise, Rey hurried towards him, Talya and Albion trailing behind her.

“You have to wait!” she insisted, Poe’s still out there!”

“I can’t!” he insisted, “The bay doors open in approximately 21 seconds.  We have a window of about 30 seconds after that to get out of here. He knows that.”

“You have to wait!” she insisted.

“10 seconds!”

Rey clenched her fist.  She had already made up her mind.  In her head she saw the look of surprise on the fighter’s face as she clocked him and threw the switch to lower the ramp.  Would they shoot at her?  She hauled back and—

“HERE!” Poe yelled.  He jumped, landing on the ramp as it raised and slid down the incline.  With a final jump he landed just beside her.  The ramp slammed into place, sealing them in.

“Seats, everyone, buckle up!” the fighter yelled, running for the front of the ship.

“Come on,” Poe said, grabbing her wrist and dragging her after him.

She made eye contact with Albion and gave him a slight shake of her head, staring pointedly at the seat she had recently vacated.  He understood, though he frowned as he and Talya sat down.

Poe brought her to the cockpit where several more Resistance members she didn’t recognize were already seated.  He pointed at a jump seat secured to the wall and then went to stand behind the pilot.  Through the window she could see the bay doors of the dock opening.  The ship engines hummed to life.

As the transporter lifted into the air, Poe came back and crouched down next to her, grinning again as he glanced her up and down.

“We’re supposed to head back to base, but I’ve changed our flight plan to rendezvous with one of our carriers just inside the Calamari Sector.  We can take my ship from there,” he assured her.

She nodded.

“Aren’t you going to ask me where I ran off to just now?” he prodded.

She glanced at him curiously.  With a flourish he pulled her light saber hilt from his coat and presented it to her.  She took it, but the thought occurred to her that all things considered, he had found it rather quickly.

“You’re welcome,” he said, “Don’t worry, once we reach the ship we can get our hands on some bacta, your face looks like—“

“The less time I spend with the Resistance, the better,” she reminded him.

His expression became grim.

“You’re upset with me,” he decided.  “Because of Hoth.”

“No, I understand about Hoth,” she said, noting the relative calm of the pilot as he steered the ship free of the slaver’s cargo barge.  “I’d like to know why you’re still lying to me and to all of the slaves you just freed.”

“I don’t understand what you—“

“Don’t!” she warned him.

He drew a deep breath and lowered his voice.

“We have a deal with the captain of this barge,” he said quickly.

“What deal?”

“He wants an alliance with us, but he doesn’t want it to be known—he’s not looking for trouble from the First Order.  We need people, fighters.  So he allowed us to ‘free’ some of his cargo.  We had 15 minutes to land, make it to the cell he left unguarded and take off.  The deal is that he keeps his men clear and allows us a clean entrance and exit and—“

“And the slaves you ‘rescued’ are so grateful that they willingly decided to join the ranks of the Resistance, I see,” she nodded.  “Because the Resistance, after all, would never use slave fighters.”

“They don’t HAVE to join us, we won’t force them.”

“But you’ll trick them into thinking you saved them.”

“We did save them… technically.”

“And what does the captain… this slaver guild captain… get in return for providing you with willing recruits?” she demanded.

“We share a common enemy.  The First Order has been boarding ships at random, forcing them to pay huge amounts for permits, and spacing their cargo when they can’t.”

“Right.  So you take down the First Order and then business for them returns to normal, and they can go back to slave trading unharrassed. I see.”

“The First Order is SPACING their cargo, Rey.  Don’t you understand what I mean by that?  If they can’t pay for the permits, all the slaves are literally dumped into space,” he said slowly.  “There is a ranking of evils that we can endure.  Destroying entire planets—systems even, spacing hundreds of living beings at once—that ranks higher for most of us than slavery does.”

“Sure, so we’ll take slavers as allies, and gangsters, like the Hutts,” she muttered.

“For now we’ll take everyone we can get, after we destroy the First Order—“

“This has already happened before though, hasn’t it?  When the Rebels destroyed the empire they had to use some allies they weren’t proud of, and then the New Republic was put in the position of having to look the other way when it came to what happened in the Outer Rim Territories—Kriff, the New Republic looked the other way when it came to Mid Rim planets most of the time, I lived on one.”

Poe nodded.

“I think you’re missing the big picture here,” he whispered.

“No.  I think I’m really the only one who can see the big picture… it’s a lot bigger than you think it is and I—“she stopped.  Maybe she wasn’t the only one who could see it.  Maybe that’s what Kylo had meant when he had hinted that she didn’t really understand the Resistance.

Ridiculous!  Perhaps he could see how the Resistance was already setting itself up to fail in the future, but it didn’t mean that he was any better.  If the First Order was spacing slaves, then they likely did so on his orders.  Poe was right.  There was a ranking of evils and Kylo Ren was higher on that ranking than the Resistance.  Maybe that was all she could really do-- find the lowest ranking evil and align herself with it.

“Your allies tricked you,” she said and sighed.  “They’ve got cell after cell full of strong slaves that they plan to take to Lothal and sell as fighters.  They separated us out and grouped who they thought were the weakest together.  They let you take the leftovers— dancers, storytellers, interpreters... you saw what happened back there.  You could barely convince them to fight for themselves.  Good luck getting them to fight for you.”

“Sneaky,” he agreed.  “But I can’t say it was a bad deal.  We got you back, didn’t we?” he chuckled. When she glanced towards him, she saw that though he laughed, he was watching her the way he always had on Hoth-- with a sort of nervous hopefulness and behind that something else.  Something she would not encourage.

“Just get me to Lothal,” she said.


	8. Lothal

Huddled beneath the scratchy fabric of a borrowed cloak, Rey touched the swollen lump of flesh above her eye yet again, and hissed in pain.

"Stop that!" Poe ordered, catching her hand and drawing it away from her face.  "Wait a few more minutes.  It takes awhile."

Rey sniffed and glanced toward the empty syringe he had dropped on the tray beside her.  "I didn't know you had medic training," she grumbled.

"I picked up a little here and there," he shrugged.

He was staring at her intently under the guise of watching the bacta injection site for a reaction.  Instead of dropping her hand, he pressed it firmly between his own.  Rey shifted in her seat and tried to look anywhere but at him.

"You're mad at me," he grinned.  "I don't blame you.  I'd be mad at me too.  Of course, deep down, I'd know I couldn't stay mad at me.  I mean-- how could I stay mad at me? I'm just so roguishly handsome, after all."

Rey smirked, and pulled her hand away.  Unabashed, Poe crossed his arms over his chest and continued to study her face.

"Alright.  Stay mad at me... for now, but explain to me how selling yourself as a slave on Lothal is going to bring down the First Order, because I don't understand what the plan is."

"Sometimes you don't get the details.  In fact, sometimes you don't even get to know the plan," she reminded him.  He winced, catching the slight bitterness in her voice.  Even though she knew that it was for the good of her friends, being left in the dark didn't sting any less.

He reached out and gently prodded down her cheekbone.  Even as lightly as he palpated, the pain was still enough to make her eyes water.

"They really did a number on you," he murmured.  "It's going to need at least one more injection."

Poe was going to be a problem.  If she had been thinking clearly, she wouldn't have told him Lothal.  She would have named the planet furthest from Lothal and slipped away the first time he  turned his head.  If Master Luke had not already made contact with the Resistance, he soon would.  In fact, even now, Poe might have already known she had gone missing on Ka'vec, and given her location to the general or to her master.  His concerned and careful ministering of her wounds might be nothing more than an act to buy time and keep an eye on her until back-up arrived.  He was a favorite of the general, after all, and to her, he was extremely loyal.

She drew in a deep breath and glanced up at him.  When their eyes met, he smiled again.  It occurred to her that what she was feeling at that moment, must have been what Kylo Ren felt every day of his life-- to always be suspicious of the people standing nearest to you.  To suspect everyone of an ulterior motive-- to think every act of kindness came laced with poison.  That was the dark side.  That was what the corrupting nature of the dark force did, and what had caused the Sith to follow the rule of two, and then... the rule of one.  Perhaps, it was the darkness inside her that Master Luke feared.  Perhaps it was already changing her.

Still, there was one thing she knew Poe wasn't faking.  Despising herself in advance for what she was about to do, she reached for his hand, clasping it between both of hers.

"I don't blame _you,_ " she said, dropping her voice.  "I don't blame anyone, really.  I understand why it had to be done.  Master Luke was right.  I can't keep that kriffing bastard out of my head.  I've tried!  I've tried so hard, but he's too strong."

At her words, Poe's smile faded.  He sat down beside her, his leg pressed against hers, his eyes never leaving her face.

"I didn't know," he said.  "I didn't know that you actually knew that he was in your head, that you were fighting him all that time.  On Hoth, you seemed so distant from everyone... from me--"

"I had to be," Rey lied, glancing down at their hands.  She began to trace his knuckles lightly with one finger.  "I was too afraid to get close to anyone-- too afraid of what he might see, of who he might hurt.  I was too afraid of what might happen... to you."

Poe froze.

Too much!  Had she gone too far?  Was he suspicious of her?  Rey dropped his hand, and drew away from the pressure of his leg against her own.

"Sorry, I-" she began

"No.  No, no, no. Don't--" he insisted, catching up her hand again. "Don't stop talking.  Don't mind me.  I just never thought that you..."

"I can't.  I can't have those sort of feelings.  Don't you understand what I'm trying to tell you?  You and I can't--"

Poe wrapped one arm swiftly around her, drawing her close as he stopped her words with his lips.  It was her turn to freeze.

It was not as awkward as she had feared.  Poe Dameron, she quickly realized, was not an inexperienced man.  The way his hand moved slowly down to her hip, slipping beneath her cloak, skimming across the exposed skin of her thigh, raising goosebumps wherever he touched-- he knew what he was doing.  She would have to be the one to stop first and she would... she would as soon as...

His lips moved to her neck, causing her breath to catch.

"SIR! They've pulled out of--"

Rey's eyes snapped open and met those of a young resistance fighter standing just beyond the open doorway.

"I... sir... uh..." he stammered.

"Perfect timing, Vance!" Poe snapped, turning slowly to glare at the boy.  "Well?  Go on, say what you've come to say."

"The... uhhh... the First Order... all their ships... sir, they've pulled out of Hutt Space," Vance stammered.

"What?  Why?" Poe demanded, pulling away from her completely.

"We don't know that.  All their ships left at the same time, and we've intercepted an order to halt all cargo inspections on all the main trade routes," the boy continued.

"What are they up to?  Are they massing their fleet for a strike of some sort?" Poe mused.

"Maybe they've figured out that they're driving allies to us because of what they're doing, sir.  They've been spacing whole cargo holds, and--"

"No.  No, they don't care about slavers joining the Resistance.  This is not like him... this seems... hasty, somehow," Poe muttered.  "Have we contacted the base?"

"They've contacted us.  The General wants all ships back to Jaro 1, as soon as possible.  They might have more information."

"Right.  Right.  Send them a reply, we're bringing forty more, and we're on our way," Poe ordered.

His cheeks still flaming, the boy nodded before disappearing.  Before he could stand, Rey grabbed Poe's arm and held firm.

"I can't!  You know that.  You can't take me to the rebel base.  It's too dangerous.  He's still in my head--"

"The General will have some idea," he began.

"No," Rey argued.  "I won't. Give me one of your fighters, We must be close to the Calamari Sector by now.  I can take it the rest of the way, and then catch a transport to Lothal."

"No.  We need you.  I don't know what your plan is but--"

"That's right.  You don't know what my plan is, but I can tell you this: I have to kill Kylo Ren.  You know well enough, that the General will never send someone to assassinate him.  She will never stop believing that her son can come back.  Master Luke carries enough guilt as it is.  This is something only I can do."

"No."

"I must.  I absolutely must.  I will never be free of him, not until he is dead.  Do you want the truth?  I want to be with you, I want to.. to..." Rey pressed her lips together tightly.  Even in her desperation, lying to him was not something she could easily do.  "I can't be of anything, even the Resistance, until I can free myself from him.  Help me, Poe.  I'm not asking you for something outrageous.  I'm just asking you to look the other way.  I'm just asking you to pretend you never saw me."

"And what if he kills you first?  Or captures you again?  What if he takes you and twists you into something so dark--"

"That won't happen. I can resist the dark side.  I've done it before."

"I don't like this."

"Can't you trust me?  Please Poe, you don't know what it's like when no one trusts you."

"Yeah, I guess I do," he muttered. "I'm not giving you my permission.  I'm not going to pretend I never saw you, and I'm not agreeing to this."

Rey exhaled slowly and clenched her fist.

"But I can't stop you.  If you were to take the transport-- say, in Bay 4, I wouldn't be able to chase you down.  It would be a violation of the General's order to return to base.  There's nothing I could do." He shrugged.

"Poe, I-"

"Don't thank me," he warned. "I don't like this.  I don't want you to do this, and I don't--"

He cast one last lingering look toward her and shook his head as though even he couldn't believe what he was doing, and then... he left.

There was no chance that he wouldn't tell General Leia and Master Luke where she was headed.  All he was really giving her was a transport and a head start.  She realized this as she began to walk, and then to jog, and then to run towards Bay 4.

 

 

Poe was telling the truth.  She commandeered the transport with relative ease.  As she pulled away from the dock, only a handful of Resistance fighters had appeared, most of them simply to stand there looking confused. No small craft pursued her as she set a course for Lothal.  So when she heard her own name shouted almost directly into her ear, she screamed and clutched at her chest.

"Rey!" Albion repeated, throwing his arms wide. "I can't tell you how happy I am to see you again.  Talya, you can come out now.  It's just Rey!"

"Wh... what are you doing here?" she stammered, still clutching at her chest.

Talya's purple head emerged cautiously from the open engine access panel in the floor.  She glanced up at Rey and offered a tentative smile before pulling herself up and out.  Albion bent to offer her his hand.

"Did we scare you?" he grinned.

"A-a little bit," Rey rasped, her voice slightly higher than normal.

"Imagine the scare you gave us then!" he chuckled.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, regaining her composure.

"Okay. Okay. I was about to tell you that," he soothed.  "Look, when you took off with the pretty boy, we figured that was the last we'd see of you--"

"You seemed to know each other pretty well.  So don't be mad us, thinking we were trying to take off without you or anything," Talya added.

"Right.  Well, we figured that was the last we'd see of you, and so there we were, stuck in the middle of a gang of vicious revolutionaries--"

" _Vicious_ might be a bit much," Talya amended.

"Who's telling this story?  I'm a professional after all, aren't I?" Albion scoffed.  "Alright so there we were, stuck in the middle of a slightly-less-than-vicious gang of revolutionaries.  We knew that if we didn't join their ranks, we'd likely be killed--"

"Put off at the next planetary hub actually-- at least that's what they said.  Still, some hub in the middle of nowhere--"

"-- OR tortured. Who's to say?" Albion insisted, speaking over Talya.  "At any rate, we knew that our only chance was to escape.  Gathering our courage, we saw an opportunity while our captors were busy taunting some of the other prisoners--"

"distributing c-rations actually--"

"And without hesitating, we took it!  I used my body to shield my companion from blaster fire as we ran--"

"He really can't run very fast at all," Talya whispered.

"We were lucky, and reached the bay without taking a single shot, but then what to do?  We had no weapons--"

"I wouldn't know how to use a blaster even if I had one," Talya admitted.

"So we stowed away on the first ship we came across.  We figured that soon enough, one of the rebels would take it out to resupply, and as soon as we were free of the ship, we'd overpower them and set a course for Corellia and--"

"We were just going to hide in here until they ended up taking it to one of the core planets.  It wasn't that great of a plan now I think on it a bit," Talya finished.

Albion sighed in a defeated sort of way and slumped down in the co-pilot chair beside Rey's.

"So... where are we heading?" he asked.

"Lothal," she snapped.  "That's where I'm heading.  When we get there the ship is yours."

Albion opened his mouth, and it seemed he would protest, but perhaps, cautious of the sharp tone in her voice, he closed it again.

"Well, at least we aren't folded in half in a storage bin waiting to starve to death anymore," Talya reminded him.  "And besides, we've got a bit of time.  Let's hear a story--a _real_ story this time too, not a made up one.  I think you could use the practice."

Albion seemed to pick up a bit at this.  He straightened in his chair and began:

"The tragic death of Cress Thul is an old story remembered only by the Bimm, but it has a lesson... a lesson that is just as pertinent in this age as it was then..."

His words began to fade out along with the cockpit of a transport.

Rey clenched her teeth and tried to focus on what the Bimm was saying, but the pull was too strong, there was another voice speaking, a voice she didn't want to hear, and he was shouting, drowning out Albion's calm and measured voice.

 

"EVERY LAST SHIP, HUX!  DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? EVERY SINGLE SHIP MUST BE ACCOUNTED FOR!"

She could hear the metallic tap of his booted feet pacing quickly, nervously, but all was dark before her.

"Sir, I hope you understand that without the presence of a regulating agency, smugglers will have a free run of the--"

"If one more cargo of slaves is spaced-- No! One single slave-- you and your commanding officers will be joining them, General Hux!"

"I've only done what you've-"

Hux's voice cut off, replaced by a horrifying gurgling sound, and the scene came sharply into focus before her eyes.  General Hux had fallen to his knees.  His hands scrabbled  uselessly at his throat as he choked.  Above him, eyes wide and wild-looking, stood Kylo Ren.  He dropped his hand when he saw her, and Hux collapsed to the floor.

"Where are you?" he thundered, heedless of his companion gasping for air on the floor.

Glancing away from him, she realized that she could still see Albion sitting beside her.  His mouth moved, but she could not hear his words.  Kylo clenched his fist and took another step towards her.  General Hux, aware that his master was no longer focused on him, got slowly to his knees and crawled a few paces before finding his feet.  He gave one last horrified glance at the black-robed figure before making a hasty retreat.

Rey didn't blame him.  Kylo Ren appeared.... for lack of a better word, unhinged.  His fists clenched and unclenched reflexively, and his lower lip seemed to tremble ever so slightly.  He stared at her as if he could burn her alive with his very gaze.

And she understood why.  He had somehow lost the ability to see inside her mind.  For months, he had had been able to find her whenever he had looked.  He had found her on Crait, and on Hoth, but now, he had searched and found nothing, and for some reason, he was afraid.  No, he was terrified.  She could feel the fear emanating from him.

He swallowed hard and glanced away from her, perhaps realizing how he appeared.

"I gave you what you wanted," he growled.  "I allowed you to go free.  Now I find that you want to play at being a slave?  Good.  Because when I find you--"

"But you can't, can you?  You can't find me," she gave a short hard laugh at this. "I think I already told you, Ben.  Don't look for me.  I'll find you!"

 

 

"REY!" Albion hollered into her ear.

"Wha-" Rey gasped, as the room spun.  She had slumped forward over the console.  "What happened?"

"I don't know.. I... I was telling the story and--"

"It's a great story, I can't believe you fell asleep," Talya sniffed.

"You just fell forward-- passed out and fell forward.  I thought you mumbled something, but I couldn't hear.  We were so worried--"

"Neither of us actually know how to fly," Talya confirmed.

"No... I'm... I'm just tired," Rey mumbled.

Albion and Talya exchanged a quick glance.

"There's a bench in back.  Probably not very comfortable, but I noticed it earlier.  If you've set a course for Lothal then perhaps you should rest for a bit.  Like Talya says, neither of us can fly a ship, but I suppose we could keep a look out for anything, -err, off, I suppose," the Bimm offered.

"No, no that's fine."

"I can tell another story, you know.  Something with a little more action.  Something that I know will keep you awake.  The Battle of Yavin 4 and--"

"No.  Definitely not," Rey interrupted. "No more stories, please."

The Bimm smiled and threw his hands up in a small gesture of surrender.

"Alright, I suppose I'll take a quick nap then," he decided.

As he left the cockpit, Talya pursed her lips and watched Rey with a very unimpressed expression.

"He really is as nice as he seems, you know.  A bit melodramatic, maybe, but he's kind.  You don't need to be so--"

"I'm sure he is," Rey cut her off.

"Well..." Talya sniffed in disapproval.  "I suppose I'll go stretch my legs a bit."

Rey sighed and leaned back in her seat.  Left alone, she suddenly regretted her dismissive manner of the two.  She needn't be so suspicious of them, or unkind either.  She could sense good will in both of them.  She thought immediately of General Hux running from Kylo Ren, and of how alone Kylo really was.  She wasn't like him though!  She was impatient, certainly, but not... she would never hurt one of her companions.

But hadn't she been willing enough to hurt Poe?  Perhaps not in the physical sense, but to lead him on... to almost promise him her heart, knowing full well that she would never give it... simply as a means to an end.  Wasn't that how Kylo justified the horrible things he did?  No jedi actually believed that wickedness or cruelty was justifiable... for any reason.  Master Luke often spoke of the path to the dark side.  A path had to be walked... it took many small steps to travel it completely.  Perhaps she had already begun to walk.

"I'm not dark," she whispered.  "I'm not, and I won't go that way."

 

 

Lothal glowed blue before them.  Not the healthy blue of a planet which glowed with life, but a dark and smoky blue, hinting at an atmosphere choked with industrial smog.  She could already make out the bits and pieces of scrap metal and garbage orbiting the globe.

"It was a very nice planet once," Albion informed them.  "Farms, wide expanses of grassy plains, forests of spine trees and when the winds blew through them, one could smell the sharp scent of their needles from miles away.  All gone now, of course.  A long time gone.  I believe it was in the days of my grandfather, when the Empire took it over and began strip mining the entire planet for crystals.  What a waste!  When they were finally defeated, there wasn't much left here.  I suppose that's what makes it an ideal place for a slave market."

"Its also in the middle of nowhere," Talya reminded them.

"You'll want to set down in Capitol City.  You're still looking for the slave market aren't you?" he confirmed.

"I am," Rey agreed, searching for landing coordinates in the ship's memory bank.

Albion whistled as they drifted slowly past the revolving wreckage of part of an imperial-era ship.

"You'd think the scavengers would have descended on it by now," he commented.

Rey gave the enormous piece of junk a quick once over

"They have," she confirmed.

She slowed as they approached the trash field, navigating deftly through the wreck and scrap.  From time to time, small bits of flotsam and jetsom pinged harmlessly against the viewing window.  The field cleared as they descended into the thick atmosphere of Lothal.  Albion was on his feet before she had even touched down.

"Never been here before.  There's bound to be a story or two out there I haven't heard yet," he grinned at them as he left.

"I think I'll wait here," Talya informed him.  "I'm still a little nervous from my last encounter with slavers."

The ship touched down, and Rey sighed and rubbed her eyes a few times.

As she moved her arm, he cloak fell open, exposing her bare leg, and the hilt of her light saber.

"What's that?" Talya asked, reaching for it at once.

"DON'T," Rey snarled, but seeing the shocked look on Talya's face, calmed her at once, "-touch that.  You shouldn't touch that. It's... It's dangerous."

"Alright, alright, take my head off will you?  Not like it's your blood arrow or something," Talya scoffed.

"My... what?" Rey whispered.

"Your blood arrow!  You really should have listened to that story.  I told you it was a good one!" Talya chided.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know. It isn't much, but it's something, right? Go easy on me, I'm trying to remember where I was and get started again.


	9. Cress Thul and the Blood Arrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had this little story within a story in my head for a long time now. I wasn't sure how to work it in. At first I thought maybe Albion should give the story in bits and pieces throughout their travels, but I hated to break it up like that-- though it seemed essential to me, for some reason, that Rey should misunderstand the meaning. I guess what I'm saying is that I decided to break the story into two parts but keep them in the same chapter. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the sad saga of Cress Thul and the Blood Arrow...
> 
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Long before the Galactic Empire, in fact tens of thousands of years before the Old Republic, I suppose it was in the days of early hyperspace, a group of force-sensitive monks, the Bendu, I believe, became the first human settlers of the planet Tython.

You've never heard of Tython, have you?  I don't know myself if it actually exists anymore, but I believe... yes, I believe it was somewhere within the Deep Core of the galaxy.  It was there that these monks disembarked, after a great pilgrimage where they gathered other force-sensitives like themselves, and spread out across the face of this planet.  There were no Jedi in these days-- they did not yet exist, but they were coming. The seeds of their order began with those Bendu monks. You see Tython was an ancient planet even then, and rich in the Force-- both the light and the dark.  When those settlers arrived, so full of light were they, that they disturbed the balance of the planet, creating a phenomenon that is unique to Tython-- a force storm.

Now there were two moons in the night sky of Tython, the first was bright, always bathed in light, and so it was called 'Ashla', which means light.  The second was forever shrouded in shadows and so it was called 'Bogan', the word for dark. It was by their observations of these two moons that the Bendu came to understand the planet Tython could only be at peace when the light and the dark were balanced.  In fact, so devoted did they become to this notion, that whenever any monk seemed to stray too far towards the light or the dark, that monk would be banished to the opposite moon, where he or she would meditate until they again found their balance.

They lived well on Tython, spreading out across continents and building nine major temples, and the planet was at peace, until Cress Thul was born.

Ah, now I've said something you recognize.  You know the name Thul. I suppose you've heard of the House of Thul, haven't you?  You must be thinking that the House of Thul belongs to that planet of the sad fate, Alderaan, and it is no more, and you are correct, of course

At any rate, at the moment Cress Thul came into being, so did one of the strongest Force storms that had ever been seen on Tython.  It did not stop for three weeks. Fearing for their lives, many of the planets inhabitants fled to the two moons. A council was called at the largest of the Bendu temples.  There, they realized that there had been a great imbalance, a strong shift to the dark, and it wasn't long before they discovered the cause.

Cress Thul had been born to a woman who had never known a man.  He was conceived purely through the power of the Force, and he appeared to have the greatest capacity for darkness that any had ever seen.

Now to be filled with darkness is one thing, and to have a great capacity to be filled with darkness is entirely another-- at least that's what several of the monks decided.  There were others among them, however, who felt that balance could only be regained by slaying the child. The first group argued that to slay an innocent baby was a great act of darkness, and that it could possibly cause the storms to worsen until the planet tore itself apart.

And so they argued amongst each other.  They could not agree on the fate of the child, and the storm raged on around them, until the third hour of the third day of the council.  At that time, the most beautiful lady that any of them had ever seen, entered the great hall of the temple, and when she spoke, the storms abated.

You want to know what she said?  Well, no one can be certain of her exact words.  It is said that she had a voice as clear, and sweet and loud as a bell, and whatever she said, it caused them to give the baby to her.

Who was this great lady?  I can see how curious you are, don't try to deny it.  She is given no other name in stories besides 'The Lady', in some places though, she is called the Great Lady, or the Shining Lady-- but Bimms are known to exaggerate a little bit here and there, and I feel 'The lady' describes her well enough.  No one knew where she had come from or who she was, but some storytellers will say that she was perhaps the last remaining Celestial in our galaxy. Yes! Celestial-- that legendary race of old. The great architects, the great powerful and mysterious ones.  I don't tell it that way myself, because all the stories say that the Celestials were gone by then. Perhaps she was a descendant of them, for she was very powerful, and she never seemed to grow old.

At any rate, the Lady took Cress Thul from the council and disappeared with him.  It was said that she brought him to live deep below the surface of the planet, in a cave more expansive and beautifully fashioned than any palace.  The boy was raised by her servants, and he soon grew into a young man who was kind in heart, brilliant in mind, and powerful in the Force. You see, she was great and powerful in the light, and she cancelled out the darkness that would have grown in the boy.

But now, our story becomes a sad one.  The lady was said to be an immortal, eternally beautiful and ever unchanging, and what do you suppose happened when the boy became a man?  Well, she was eternally beautiful, after all, and what man can resist a shining perfect woman of eternal beauty? Not Cress Thul, by any means.  He was deeply in love with her. So deeply, in fact, that he could not imagine a life without her. His only dark thoughts were the ones where it occurred to him that he might someday be separated from her.  But when that day came, he left by his own choice.

The lady... was dying.  But Albion, did you not just say that she was immortal and unchanging?  Yes, I suppose I did, and I suppose she might have stayed that way, but for one thing.  The years she had spent as the counterbalance to the black hole of darkness that still resided in Cress Thul's heart, had drained her very life force.  When he discovered this, and when he realized that there was no way to save her, he fled from her side, fearing that his presence would only kill her faster.

He fell into a sort of madness after that, which I suppose one does when they destroy the only thing they love in all the world.  With the lady's light fading, and the darkness growing inside of Cress Thul, the planet Tython again raged with Force storms. The Bentu drove Cress away and he, angry at his fate, and determined to control what he could in this life, took up the very bad habit of raising armies and decimating other planets.

He did so many bad things, in fact, that news of his escapades reached his dying lady even in her cave.

She had loved him as well, you know.  Loved him enough to die for him, but she could not allow him to destroy entire worlds.  The lady came up with a plan. It is said that in her veins, flowed a shining liquid metal that pulsated with light.  She cut her wrists, and from her own blood she forged a single arrow.

Now this act weakened her greatly, and as she chased after Cress Thul, she became weaker still.  By the time she caught up to him-- on the planet Delaya in the Alderaan Sector, I believe-- she could barely stand on her own two feet.  It was said, that in her last act, she drew her bow, nocked her arrow, and fell dead before she could fire it.

If I have made Cress Thul seem like a bad man before the death of his lady, I can only compare what he became afterwards to a howling monster.  He seemed to have lost all his reason. He burned entire cities to the ground, devoured continents, his actions caused more than one planet to become uninhabitable.  Can you imagine the hatred that must have festered inside of him? Especially when he realized that the Lady he had loved above anything else, the Lady who had once happily offered her life to save his, had tried to kill him.

He took that arrow, by the way.  He took that arrow and never let it out of his sight.  Now some folks will tell you that he held onto it for one reason and one reason alone-- he was an awfully hard fellow to kill.  Remember, he was born with a great capacity for the dark force, and once it was filled, I suppose he was probably as powerful as any sith lord that has ever lived.  There were many who believed that the Lady's blood arrow was the only thing that _could_ kill him, and so there were many plans to steal the arrow and stab him with it.  But I think there was another reason as well. He had loved her, after all, and when she fell dead, they found only her clothes.  Her body dissipated into the Force, so if you will humor my romantic notion, I believe that the arrow was the only thing he had left of her.  I think he didn't just keep it with him out of fear, but out of some sort of love as well.

Now I've mentioned that there were many plans to steal the arrow.  I would bet he foiled two or three a week.  No one had even laid eyes on it-- but then, Cress Thul made a mistake.  He set his mind to conquering Tython--

 

 

"So the blood arrow was more or less a weapon that he kept with him at all times because he was afraid someone would use it to kill him," Rey said as she exhaled a deep sigh.  "Thanks.  I suppose that's all I really needed to know."

"No, not at all! Well, yes, at first-- but you see, there's more to this story.  There's more to it than that.  The blood arrow wasn't something that--"

"Cut to the end.  Did the blood arrow kill him?" Rey demanded.

"Er-- I suppose one could say that... uhh... well in a way, I suppose it... just listen to the story--"

"Did it kill him?"

"Yes, eventually, but not in the way an arrow normally does," Albion admitted.

Rey threw back the rest of her drink, and stood up.  The dark and smoky tavern was filled with low conversation and hooded figures.  She could feel speculative eyes and dark thoughts.  She did not like this place.

"Come on.  We've wasted enough time here, and I've still got to find the slave market," she insisted.

Albion finished his drink as well and followed her out to the street.  A slow-moving caravan of banthas loaded down with goods was taking up most of the street, impeding the flow of foot traffic.

"I wouldn't head that way," Albion suggested.  "You won't find a slave market at the city center.  They change locations every time.  Slavers tend to favor abandoned buildings in out of the way places which--"

The Storyteller was interrupted by the frightened cries of a bantha which came from the back of the caravan.  A few seconds later more cries were heard, and the animals nearest them began to move faster, causing the crowds to surge forward as well, and many people to cry out in alarm.

Albion stepped into the street and hopped unto a cart, shielding his eyes he stared into the distance.

"I don't see it, but I can hear it," he called.  "Some thick-headed dolt is trying to drive a speeder through this. Ah, now I see it!  What's he doing?  He's going to cause a stampede if he's not--"

Rey leapt back as a small speeder shot by her, leaving frightened yelps and shouts of indignation in its wake.  It turned onto a side street in front of them, disappearing as quickly as it had come, but as it turned, Rey saw a flash of purple from the moving parcel thrown across the back.

"Was that..." she began.

"Talya?" Albion finished.  "Yes.  I think we've found those slavers you were looking for."

He leapt down from the cart, but Rey had already started running.  She turned the corner and immediately had to dodge a cart full of vaporizer parts and a knot of very upset moisture farmers.  In the distance, the speeder turned again, and as Rey raced after it she turned to look back for Albion.

As Talya had once said, he was not a fast runner, though he was obviously trying hard to keep up.  His face was very red, and his cheeks puffed from hard breathing, but he gave her a grin.  Rey scoffed and turned just in time to see the spilled bushel of camba-fruit in her path.  She leapt, clearing it easily, but was forced to duck and roll as the tail of a dewback swung toward her.  The next time she glanced over her shoulder, Albion had disappeared.

Rey turned the corner at a full run, and found herself, for the first time since arriving on Lothal, on a completely abandoned alleyway.  She could hear her hurried footsteps echoing down the street.  Glancing from side-to-side, she noted that no sign of life came from any of these buildings.  They seemed to be imperial-era structures and had probably been abandoned since the fall of the Empire.  This was where a slave market would be!

The speeder had disappeared, but she soon discovered something else that caused her legs to move even faster.  There was a disturbance here in the Force.  There was a great surge of fear and uncertainty and pain.  There was darkness, and it surely came from the terrified beings who were held chained and caged for the perusal of others.

She came at last to a tall, domed building that seemed to be in the process of falling apart.  Scraps of metal had fallen away in places, exposing the construction beams, and broken glass lay scattered across the street below, a testament to all the missing windows.  There was no sign of the speeder, but all of the doors to the building had been sealed by sheets of metal bolted across them... all but one. The sheet metal lay on the ground beside it as though having only recently been pried off.  This would be the entrance to the slave market, she was certain.  This was where she would find the Knights of Ren.  She was about to nock her arrow.

Stepping cautiously through the doorway, she heard the murmurs first.  Dozens and dozens of low voices arguing, agreeing, commenting in many different languages, and beneath those, voices muffled by gags-- crying, pleading...

A long corridor opened into the domed great room which must have once been a main assembly hall of the old Empire's government.  The tiered seating had been removed, and the main floor now appeared to be a series of log flat steps descending to a level floor where speeders and pack animals waited for retrieval while their masters made their purchases.  The slavers organized themselves by steps.  On the first step, clusters of beautiful Twi'lek girls sat back to back, their arms bound together.  Beyond them were captive species that even Rey couldn't identify-- they seemed to have tentacles for arms, but even these were bound in iron cuffs and chained to rings in the floor.   She recognized humans among the captives, but was surprised to see Wookies in cages-- she could not imagine how anyone could catch and keep a Wookie, they were extremely powerful and not at all opposed to defending themselves.

Through this market of misery moved the buyers, stopping to examine the living wear, bidding, laughing with others. Most of them she couldn't identify-- they were shadowy figures in a hooded cloacks like her own-- a few Hutts, a handful of Zygerrians, and... and... Jaila!

Jaila... the Knight whose apprentice she had slain on Baudere.  Jaila who would have killed her had Kylo Ren not intervened when he did.  She wore her full armor, carrying her helmet under her arm, and as she walked, her attention seemed to be focused on a row of kneeling slaves.  From time to time she would stop in front of one and nod slightly to one of her companions who would then begin bargaining for the slave she had indicated as she continued her inspection.  If she could find out where those slaves were going, she could, perhaps, with a little wave of her hand, slip in among them without attracting any attention, and make her way back to Baudere.

Just below her, voices were raised in heated argument, an argument that was beginning to draw attention.  Looking down, Rey almost let out a shriek of irritation.  Albion had found Talya, bound hand to foot, and was now arguing with the slaver who stood beside her.

"And I say that is MY companion whom you've only just now stolen from my ship!" Albion argued, stamping his foot.  "How dare you!  How dare you think you can do such a thing and get away with it!"

A chorus of laughter from those assembled around them was his answer.

"Release her at once, or I'll, I'll... Rey!  Rey, I've found her! Rey!" Albion yelled, spotting her above the masses.

On the level below Albion, Jaila had paused, and now spoke with one of the black-robed apprentices who followed in her wake.  Were they done?  Were they going to leave?

"Rey, it's me!  Hey, down here!" he called, waving an arm frantically at her.

"Kriff," Rey growled.

Gritting her teeth, she jumped down to Albion's level and strode quickly across to him.  She had lost sight of Jaila, but if she moved quickly, she might still be able to catch up to their group.

"Let her go!" Rey demanded, while still walking towards the slaver-- a corpulant, blue-skinned man with a single long head tail.

"You lot are nothing more than a bunch of thieves, making up a story like that.  Let her go?  Ha!" he growled.

"One of your men snatched her right off of our ship!  You can't do that!" Albion insisted.

"Where do you think slaves come from, little man?" laughed someone in the crowd.

"I'll only say it once more, let her go," Rey repeated.

"No," the slaver growled.

Moving so fast, that no one had time to react, Rey snatched her light saber, ignited it and cut through the chain securing Talya's arms to her legs.  By the time Talya screeched, Rey had already snatched her by her shoulder and pulled her to her feet.

"Get back to the transport!" she snapped.  Talya nodded.

"See... you can't just do things like that," the slaver drawled, taking a step towards her.  "There's rules here, and you've broken them."

The crowd of onlookers had changed in an instant from leering to menacing, the circle around her and Albion grew tighter and smaller.  Rey swung her blade up to point at the slaver's throat.

"Let...us...pass," she said, enunciating each word.

"Oh my.  What do we have here?"

Rey froze, recognizing the voice.  Her plan of slipping in with the slaves the Knights took and even of taking Kylo Ren by surprise would now have to be scrapped. The crowd parted to allow Jaila and her entourage of hooded apprentices to approach.

"The filthy scavenger.  Kylo Ren's little pet, isn't it?  I can't remember your name," Jaila smiled.  She nodded to one of her apprentices.  "Take her."

Rey swung her blade to point at the first apprentice who moved toward her.  She could not fight them all, but what she could do... there was so much dark energy here.  Fear, and hatred and pain... all of it... she could draw that power in and... and... she wanted to do it.  She wanted to destroy every one of those evil slavers, that entire market even, but that meant destroying Talya and Albion as well as countless other innocent slaves.

"Let my companions go, and I won't fight you," Rey conceded, dropping her blade.  Perhaps she had lost the element of surprise, but she was still going to Baudere.  That was enough.

Jaila's eyes moved moved over Talya and Albion.

"Release the Theelin, but keep the Bimm, he's got a spark in him, I suppose," Jaila decided.

Talya took a step backwards and eyed Rey tentatively.

"What are you waiting for?" Rey asked.  "Run."

The purple-haired girl looked as though she might cry for a moment.  Albion smiled reassuringly and nodded his agreement.  Talya ran, stumbling to get out of that place, while those around them began to lose interest in the scene and went back to their tasks.

"Bring me her blade, and made sure you bind her well.  She's slippery and Force-strong" Jaila ordered her lackeys.  She too turned to walk away.

Rey allowed her arms to be secured and her light saber to be snatched, as she was shoved into a procession with other slaves acquired by the Knights of Ren.  Albion walked just ahead of her, and two of Jaila's apprentices walked beside her-- one on either side.

"Where do you think they'll take us?" Albion called back.

"Baudere," Rey mumbled.

"Haven't heard of that one before.  Huh.  Is it far?"

"I think so," Rey agreed.

"Well, there is a bright side then," he suggested.

"Is there?" Rey scoffed.

"If it's a long trip I'll have time to tell you the rest of the story, right?"

Rey heaved a long sigh in response.

 

 

Now, as I've said, many people plotted to get that arrow and kill Cress Thul with it, but none had managed to accomplish this-- that is, until he returned to his homeworld, Tython.  I don't actually know why he returned there.  Maybe he was angry at having been forced off years before, or maybe in his mad and twisted mind, he blamed them somehow for his Lady's death, but I do know what he intended to do there.  He intended to conquer that planet and make it the center of his Empire.

He might have done it too, if not for one brave Tython-- his own mother.  History does not record her name either.  When he was born, she had tried to hide him from the Bendu Council, fearing that they would know he was the cause of the storm and slay him.  Like almost any mother, her instinct was to protect him, but when she saw what he had become and what he planned to do to their home, she knew that she would have to be the one who destroyed what she'd brought into the world.

She went to his armies on her own, with his birth clothes and the small bassinet he had slept in for only three weeks and she told them her story, and she cried, and begged, and pleaded to see her son.  For some reason, Cress Thul allowed it.  Perhaps he was curious, or perhaps the idea of someone in this galaxy who might be able to love him was still and attractive idea to him.  The woman through herself on the floor before him, and begged him for forgiveness, crying and saying that she should have never given him away, and that she had only done it to protect him and so on and so forth.  Her actions were so convincing, that Cress Thul allowed her to stay among his followers.

It took this woman weeks.  She told him secrets about the Tythans.  She helped him strategize.  She gave him encouragement and information and what appeared to be loyalty.  She made all the food that he ate, claiming that it was the only way she could trust that no one would poison it.  She made any medicine that he needed by her own hand and would allow no one else to minister to him.  It took her many months, but he trusted her-- as much as a man like Cress Thul could ever trust anyone-- and she used that trust, to discover the location of the blood arrow.

He kept it with him at all times, attached to his leg in a special leather sheath.  He took it off only when he slept, and as he slept, he held it in his arms.  One night, his mother came to him with a medicine she had concocted for his headaches, and he, used to the routine by now, drank it, and fell into a deep sleep.  The woman unsheathed the arrow, placed the point over his heart, and with all her strength, drove the arrow into the body of her son.

Now, I know what you're thinking... that was the end of Cress Thul, right?  No! Not by a long shot.  You see, here is where we learn what the Lady had intended all along.  The blood arrow was never meant to kill Cress Thul.  It was a creation of pure light force and as it entered his body, it burned away all the darkness therein.  He was purified, reborn, and immediately horrified by everything he had ever done.

He sat bolt upright with the Lady's blood arrow sticking out of his chest, and called for his men at once.  He pulled his armies out of Tython within a day, leaving all the supplies of his armies to feed and sustain the people he had besieged for so long.  From then on, Cress Thul battled the Dark Force wherever he encountered it in the galaxy.  He brought the first human settlers to Takodana after their planet was destroyed.  He and his men abolished the slave trade on the core planets-- yes, I know, I wish they'd of kept going with that as well. He fought to protect non-sentient species from the effects of over-industry on Corellia.  Truly, his heroic exploits could fill volumes-- and they do.  Perhaps another time I will tell you about... right, right, I do have a habit of going off on a tangent, don't I?

All this he did, with the blood arrow of his lady sticking out of his chest!  Yes, I know.  It's strange to imagine, isn't it?  For the blood arrow could never be removed or he would die, and besides, it was precious to him.  The arrow was a daily reminded of that which he had loved best, and to it, he owed his salvation and his sanity.  The blood arrow was his most valued treasure.  He often said that it contained the most powerful force in the known galaxy, and as it turned out he was quite right.

You see in those days, the evil Rakata were building their Infinite Empire, actively seeking Force-worlds to drain of power.  The Rakata were ancient even then.  It is said by many that they were once slaves to the Celestials, utilized as builders in their massive constructions, but they had turned and attacked their benevolent masters, driving them out of the galaxy and taking it for themselves.  When the Rakata's Force Hounds discovered Tython-- you do know what a Force Hound is, yes?  No?! Very well, the next tale I tell with be of Xesh, the most famous of those and-- right, right.  Tangent!

At any rate, in order to stop the Rakata from attacking Tython, Cress Thul attacked their forces, and the fled to Alderaan.  A large group of the Rakata took his bait, followed him, and met with his armies there in the desert.  Oh yes, Alderaan was a desert then.  It had once been the home planet of the Killiks, who had stipped it of every last resource before abandoning it.  The two armies fought with each other there, but unfortunately, the forces of Cress Thul were grossly out-numbered.  When he knew that they would lose, when he knew that the Rakata would not allow them to surrender, but would kill each and every one of his soldiers before they left, he made a fateful decision.

Cress Thul, pulled the arrow from his heart and plunged it into the barren sand, and from that point, exploded so much light and life and pure Force, that the Rakata were immediately vanquished.  Disintegrated, supposedly! Across the wasteland life bloomed.  Grass grew instantly, flowers exploded in bursts of color, water, bubbled up from underground springs and created the lakes and rivers that were so well-known ever after.

For thousands and thousands of years, the planet Alderaan was considered to be among the most beautiful in the known galaxy.  It was renown for its art and philosophy and its people were great peacemakers.  The noble house of Thul took their name from the great hero, and the legacy of his sacrifice and the blood arrow lived on for eons, until that planet... was no more.

 

 


End file.
